Overwatch developed 'from day one' to be on consoles, no PC-console crossplay

Overwatch, Blizzard's new team-based shooter, was designed from the beginning to play well on consoles as well as PC, game director Jeff Kaplan said at BlizzCon today. "It was kind of a dream of ours," Kaplan said.

Kaplan was addressing concerns that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Overwatch were ported from the PC version as an afterthought.

"When we started to make Overwatch ... it was our goal from day one to have this game playable on console," Kaplan said. "Designing the game so it felt great on a console controller almost put this forced design elegance on us," he added, meaning that they wanted the games controls to play well with a limited number of buttons.

Kaplan said that the console versions of Overwatch will come with "full integration with Xbox Live and PlayStation Network." He also confirmed that, much to the dismay of PC gamers hoping to mop up console players, Overwatch won't feature PC-to-console crossplay. "They're their own ecosystems," he said.

Overwatch is coming to PS4, Windows PC and Xbox One next spring.