True, but I feel like not releasing the game at all is even worse. The consensus seems to be that PS5 already has better exclusives and now you can’t even play one of this year’s best third party games on Xbox.
I also thought they might have such a requirement but I was unable to find a source that confirms (or even mentions) it. Definitely still possible though.
As far as I can tell the article only talks about a feature parity requirement between the Xbox Series S and Series X versions. And that could be met by just dropping the feature from both versions.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t just release both Xbox versions without split screen and then try to patch it in later. That way they’d satisfy the feature parity requirement (as I understand it) and people could at least play the game. I love that they’re still doing split screen despite it seemingly having fallen out of favour these days, but it’s hardly an essential feature.
There isn’t really a “second one”. Overwatch 2 was just a patch with essentially two major changes. They changed the monetisation, making the game free-to-play and introducing the battle pass. An especially unpopular part of that is that new heroes now have to be bought with real money or unlocked through the battle pass. The other big change is the move from 6v6 to 5v5, which was controversial. There are definitely some positives, like getting rid of the “double shield meta”, which did make the game more fun. But there’s also more pressure and focus on the single tank.
The game is free and if you bought OW1 you still have all your stuff (cosmetics and all the non-OW2 heroes), so if you’re curious you can just check it out. Personally I’m still enjoying the game but there’s also a lot of valid criticism.