Overwatch Sells Over 7 Million in First Week

Overwatch. It's popular, right? That's not news, it's not even a little surprising, everyone by now knows and loves Blizzard's new arena-based character shooter. But what you might not know is exactly how popular it actually is. And while I can promise you it's not anywhere close to how popular Minecraft is, Overwatch ain't doing bad for itself, especially given how 'new' it is.

Well, in a press release earlier today, Blizzard took the opportunity to boast about that success, with CEO and cofounder Mike Morhaime saying:

"Over the months and weeks leading up to release we saw a lot of love and support for Overwatch-from Blizzard gamers, FPS fans, and people who'd never picked up a game like this before-and we're very grateful for everyone's incredible passion and enthusiasm. We poured a lot of effort into creating a game-and a new universe-that anyone could enjoy. We're ecstatic to have had such a successful launch, and we're looking forward to all of the fun, competition, and new content still to come."

How 'enthusiastic' are people? Well, since the release on May 24th, over 7 million people have purchased the game across all platforms, who have logged more than 119 million hours of game time since. And that's in just over a week! Holy cheese nips!

... Yeah, I'm never saying that again. Point is, this is seriously impressive, even if it's not really that surprising. Given that the game enjoyed an open beta of 9.7 million people, that means the game ultimately had a retention rate of about 72 percent and perhaps more, if other people who participated in the demo are just waiting for the funds to buy the full game.

So yeah, Overwatch is looking like it's going to be more than big: it's going to be a phenomenon.

A new era breaks out over the world of gaming...