The Le Sserafim collab is far from the last crossover you’ll see in Overwatch 2.
Aside from cross-branded Blizzard tie-ins, Lego Bastion and the Pink Mercy charity skin that fans yearn for even now, it took a long time for Overwatch to truly embrace in-game collaborations. We’ve seen a few fun crossovers in Overwatch 2 this year with One-Punch Man, Diablo IV and now K-pop sensations Le Sserafim (and arguably John Cena, but that was more a case of an actor playing a role).
But the Overwatch team isn’t stopping there. In fact, you can expect even more collaborations in 2024, and the first batch is already locked in.
“The collaborations that we’ll be doing in the first half of the year, those are set. We’re still working on some of the stuff for later in the year,” Aimee Dennett, Blizzard’s associate director of game product management, told me. “We can’t share too much. We don’t want to ruin the surprise. But we do have quite a few collaborations planned next year — more than this year — and are really excited for everyone to see those as well.”
By my count, that means there will be at least four crossovers next year. Or five if you include Cena in the collaboration tally for 2023.
In an interview, Dennett and Overwatch general manager Walter Kong kept mum about what exactly those collaborations will entail. I asked them whether, now that Blizzard is under Microsoft’s umbrella, we might see any crossovers with Xbox franchises. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t give a concrete answer, but a collab with the likes of Halo, The Elder Scrolls, Banjo-Kazooie or even Microsoft Word’s Clippy might be a little easier to pull off if there’s something that makes sense for all parties.
“[As] with Diablo, I think it’s going to be a bit easier to just talk to our counterparts in different parts of the organization,” Kong told me. “But we will just take the same same approach, do we think this is going to be exciting for our players? And is it something that we’re going to get passionate about in our work to create something special?”
It’s great to hear that more collaborations are on the way. Crossovers have helped pull me back into the likes of Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League in the past. I’ve been saying for a long time that the right collaborations can help bring more attention to Overwatch 2 and expand the fan base (I understand that some Le Sserafim fans are becoming interested in the game, for instance).
I’m really looking forward to finding out what Team 4 is cooking up on the collaboration front. With Overwatch 2 set to have a sizable presence at BlizzCon this weekend, perhaps we’ll at least get some crossover teases there. We never did get Tracer in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but perhaps we’ll see some Overwatch 2 characters popping up elsewhere too.
Meanwhile, I’ll have more to share from my interview with Dennett and Kong in the coming days. They shared some more details about the Le Sserafim crossover, such as how it came together in the first place and how long the collaboration was in the works.
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