Blizzard's Overwatch open beta pulls in over 9 million players

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Overwatch - Intense team-based shooter (Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

It seems that Blizzard’s upcoming team shooter, Overwatch, is already proving pretty popular according to stats release from the open beta test.

Blizzard’s own numbers claim that the game, which is due to launch on the 24th of May, saw a whopping 9.7 million player log in to play the open beta across the PC, PS4 and Xbox One versions.

All these players managed to log over 81 million hours of gameplay across 37 million competitive team matches.

Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s CEO and cofounder buzzed, “We’re thrilled that such an incredible number of players from around the globe got a chance to check out Overwatch during the Open Beta. Our mission was to make sure as many console and PC gamers as possible could experience the full game ahead of its launch-the response was overwhelming, and we hope that everyone had a blast.”

Overwatch is Blizzard’s first ever attempt at making a team shooter having been best known for the genre-defining MMO World Of Warcraft and the esports real-time strategy phenomenon that is Starcraft.

Overwatch will be released on PC, PS4 and Xbox One simultaneously at the end of the month.