Overwatch recruits more than 7 million players in its first week (update)

More than 7 million people worldwide have played Overwatch since the game's launch on May 24, Blizzard Entertainment announced today. The company called it "one of the most successful global game launches of all time" and boasted that more than 119 million hours of the game have been played.

Blizzard clarified in an email to Polygon that the 7 million player figure represents the "unique global player count, which includes anyone who's played the digital or retail version of the game, as well as those who have played the game in Internet game rooms."

Last month, Blizzard announced that some 9.7 million players took part in Overwatch's open beta on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One.

The only other launch figures the company provided were that "players have swapped heroes 326 million times and teamed up to deliver 11 million payloads to their destinations on the battlefields of tomorrow." The company did not disclose how many times players had chosen Bastion, even when there was already another Bastion on the team and we didn't even have a single tank or healer.

For more on Overwatch, read Polygon's review of the hero-based shooter.

Update: Blizzard reached out to Polygon with the following additional statistic regarding Bastion.

We can confirm that players have selected Bastion while there was already at least one other Bastion on the team, but no tank or support heroes, in more than 93 thousand matches so far. Speaking of Bastion, have you tried countering Bastion as Hanzo, Genji, or Widowmaker?

Also the total number of Bastion eliminations is 189,945,309.