- One of the world's most popular games, a first-person shooter named "Overwatch," is headed to the Nintendo Switch.
- The team-based competitive shooter has been wildly popular since it launched way back in May 2016.
- "Overwatch" is scheduled to launch on the Nintendo Switch on October 15.
- For more stories go to the Business Insider South Africa homepage.
The world's hottest game console, Nintendo's Switch, is about to get one of the world's hottest games: "Overwatch."
Nintendo announced as much on Wednesday afternoon during a Nintendo Switch livestream on YouTube, including the game's release date: October 15.
The game's imminent arrival on the Switch was first reported by Kotaku earlier on Wednesday.
Though it's certainly a big deal that "Overwatch" is headed to Switch, it's far from surprising: The game is incredibly popular and already available on every other major game console.
It's also colorful, enormously fun, and ridiculously addictive - the perfect "one more match" game, especially on a kid-friendly console like the Switch.
So, why wasn't "Overwatch" already on the Switch?
"Right now there are some technical challenges," Blizzard game director Jeff Kaplan told Business Insider in a May 2017 interview. "The tech specs [on Switch] aren't quite there. It would be a non-trivial undertaking for us to make the game on Switch."
He pointed to Nintendo's history of upgrading consoles with more horsepower as something to keep an eye on. "One of Nintendo's most successful platforms is 3DS," Kaplan said. "And watch how many times they upgraded that over time," he said. "Just because something might not be feasible now doesn't mean that at some point in the future it might be an option for us."
Of note: The main Switch model on sale in September 2019 is almost identical to the one that launched in March 2017.
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