Is Activision set to make Blackout and Overwatch free to play? Activision will lean towards an Epic Games-style model in 2019 by making both Overwatch and Call of Duty: Blackout free to play, a gaming analyst says. Epic enjoyed great success in 2018 when it came to generating interest and profits from its popular battle royale game Fortnite, and Activision has publicly admitted that it has had an impact on their business. Now, gaming analyst Michael Pachter from Wedbush Securities believes that the developer will adopt the same \u2018free to play\u2019 tactics for both Overwatch and Call of Duty in the coming year. \u201cI think that the 18 Overwatch League owners have been assured by Blizzard that it will expand the audience for Overwatch,\u201d Pachter wrote for GamesIndustry.biz. \u201cThe most expedient way to do this is to make the core game free-to-play in order to attract tens of millions of new users, who ostensibly will convert to OWL viewers.\u201d The gaming analyst expected this change by mid-June, which will mark the third anniversary of the original game\u2019s launch. He also believes that the developer will hand out skins and other cosmetic items for players who bought the core game, before it\u2019s made free for all. Pachter predicted last year that a battle royale mode would be introduced to the Call of Duty franchise and he was certainly right about that. The new \u2018Blackout\u2019 game mode was announced in May last year and contributed towards Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 generating $500 million from the first three days it was on sale. But next, he thinks the franchise will go a step further. \u201cBlackout will go FTP at least a month prior to the launch of next year\u2019s Call of Duty, in order to promote the new game,\u201d Pachter added. Whether or not Activision make these moves throughout 2019 remains to be seen and the publisher has yet to comment on any of these predictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is Activision set to make Blackout and Overwatch free to play? Activision will lean towards an Epic Games-style model in 2019 by making both Overwatch and Call of Duty: Blackout free to play, a gaming analyst says. Epic enjoyed great success in 2018 when it came to generating interest and profits from its popular battle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}