Going live right around the time Gearbox’s fellow hero shooter Battleborn debuted, if Blizzard Entertainment’s beta for Overwatch opened against hefty competition it didn’t show, with the publisher confirming that the online testing session fast became the biggest in Blizzard’s decorated history.
Pulling in a total of 9.7 million players across PS4, Xbox One and PC, the fact that the beta test ran for almost a week no doubt helped push those numbers higher, but it’s a remarkable tally nonetheless.
For the sake of comparison, Overwatch‘s open beta broke past both Destiny and The Division‘s total, pre-release player count – 4.6 and 6.4 million, respectively – which were both record-setters for a brief period.
Here’s the official announcement via the game’s Twitter account.
The world needed heroes, and an incredible 9.7 MILLION of you answered the call. Here’s to our next adventure! pic.twitter.com/YIusT0rCUa
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) May 12, 2016
Opening up 21 heroes for players to test, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime expressed his gratitude to those that put Overwatch‘s early build through its paces:
“Our mission was to make sure as many console and PC gamers as possible could experience the full game ahead of its launch – the response was overwhelming, and we hope that everyone had a blast.”
Overwatch launches across PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on May 24.