Heroes of the Storm Is Now On Xbox Game Pass

 

I don't typically care what comes and goes from Xbox's never-ending slop cycle of Game Pass titles, but today is different. My favorite MOBA game, Blizzard's highly underrated Heroes of the Storm, has finally made the leap from Battle.net to Xbox's PC Game Pass program. You might remember my recent article about Heroes. Getting the game on Steam was one of the suggested moves that I thought Microsoft should make to potentially get an influx of new players to the game, but I didn't even consider Game Pass as another route. When I saw the announcement that Heroes was coming to Game Pass, I screamed like a banshee, so loudly and at such a high pitch that I blew out all the windows to my house.

 

In a similar fashion to how League of Legends functions on Microsoft's platform, playing Heroes on Game Pass grants players the "Heroic Reinforcement Bundle" - an in-game purchase that instantly unlocks 30 playable characters. This is a huge boon for new players that can access loads of diverse characters from across Blizzard's iconic roster of gaming icons from Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, Overwatch and others. It is unclear at this time if the Game Pass players and the Battle.net players are playing cross-platform, but I suspect they are, as a Battle.net login seems to be required to play via Game Pass.

 

I hope that this is the beginning for Heroes of the Storm seeing a true second wind of popularity. The game was maintaining a decent sized population before the Game Pass move. An ex-developer that had worked on Smite told me that Heroes has actually consistently been pulling better numbers than their own MOBA. I think if Microsoft can get the game on Steam, and have it function cross-platform, we could really start seeing the game tick up in players. For all of Heroes of the Storm players out there, I'm with you. We're witnessing the phoenix like rebirth of our beloved game. Please, if you're a veteran of the game, be good and welcoming to the new players. Let's keep the momentum up. Steam has to be next. Come on Microsoft, don't let us down.