It seems really weird to me that since the announcement of the pricing model for Overwatch no new beta invites have gone out. Before Blizzcon there were regular waves of invites which kept people hopeful, but in the week up to it Blizzard said there would be no new invites till after Blizzcon. Well, it's been a week since Blizzcon ended and there hasn't been a single invite wave, so I'm starting to lose hope of seeing access before the next beta phase. It's a shame because the game still looks amazing.

Another reason the numbers are probably down is the "variety" streamers who just stream whatever is the latest new title have all moved on to Fallout 4 and taken their 10k+ viewerships with them.

Pretty sure Bollard is right. The streamers who jump from game to game took their viewers elsewhere. And since the game isn't very available right now there isn't much of a competitive scene to have or a fan community to watch said scene. These first couple waves were just to spread the word and make people want the beta. Once it opens up more a larger twitch community should develop and by then hopefully we have beta access.

I kinda feel that Overwatch is slow and kind of dull to watch. The modes so far are so very basic, that it really only lives on its characters. Which I think are so extremely hit and miss. Soldier 76 is like the most generic and boring looking character I have seen, to the point that I am baffled that they use him as their poster boy. Then there are characters like Zenyatta that look awesome both in terms of design and mechanics.

I also kind of think the price announcement immediately made quite a significant amount of people lose any interest in the game. The really big games on Twitch[1] overtime is League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, Counter Strike Global Offensive. All are free to play games, except Counter Strike which is like 14 dollars. Still, 60/40 is still a much bigger investment. It just means that a certain audience wont give it the time of day, no matter what. And the ones that are willing to pay that much, they need more than watching a few streams to get excited and to pay that fee. I kinda felt like the hype was going steadily, then took a nosedive at the price announcement. Hopefully Blizzard will step up beta invites, so people can actually try it out. I am afraid they will really limit invites though, which is a very common strategy to build hype. Which I think Blizzard intends to ride into release and hope it pays off in people buying it.

Overwatch looks like a game that will cash in on a retail price up front, then eventually be turned f2p a few months down the line. Which makes me more inclined to wait.

Same here, i guess that is because i have seen everything the game has to offer and i don't think that it is enough to keep me playing for a decent amount of time.

@atwa: I don't find it dull. Its pretty interesting for me, but without playing it myself, it just feels whatever?

@giant_gamer: Thats what I am worried about even without touching the game. I'm sure I'll buy it the day before release just to get the pre-order bonuses, but I hope they keep adding things in to keep it interesting.

I wonder if it is because Overwatch seems too much like TF2, and therefore may not interest people who are tired of or never liked TF2.

I'm probably alone on this, but I got to try both, and I actually found the coop mode in Battleborn more entertaining than all of what I played in Overwatched.

I feel like them announcing that it wasn't F2P and a release date kinda killed the hype. I never thought there was much hype to being with from the game itself, more that Blizzard was making a new thing and it'll probably be good. I also feel like it probably needs more modes for the people who didnt like Payload in TF2. Personally, I think it looks great. But I imagine most people's opinion Brad's on the recent bombcast, as in it has cool characters and it plays well but isn't doing anything super new.

I think it also has the TF2 viewer problem where its not super fun to watch unless the player knows what they're doing. But that might just be me no like watching people play games badly.

I think TF2 is dreadfully boring and plays bad. I can't wait for Overwatch. It improves in so many ways.

@silver-streak: I played Battleborn and I really enjoyed the PvP and felt like the PvE/Single Player was lacking, but that's probably because I played with random people.