For more than a month now, it takes 14 minutes for me to launch Overwatch. It takes about 4 minutes to get past a black loading screen to the picture screen that says press “A” to play. It then spends about 10 minutes on the “Loading Preferences” step. I do not receive error messages. The internet is fine; once the game loads I have a latency of about 30 ms and do not get disconnected.
System: Xbox and PS4
Steps tried that have had no impact
Post on Bug Report Forum (no reply except from another user with the issue)
File Customer Service Ticket (replies repeatedly tell me to perform steps that I have already done and that don’t help)
Unplug console and let sit for 10 minutes
Unplug router and modem
Forget internet and reconnect
Use phone as hotspot and load off its internet
Take console to friends house and use their internet
Uninstall and reinstall Overwatch
Log into battle net account using PS4
Log into Battle.net and Steam on my phone prior to launching on Xbox
I am in the Chicago suburbs. I play the game every day and this happens every day. It does not matter if I load the game at 8:30 AM or 10:30 PM. If I leave the console on, the time needed to launch the game is reasonable (even if I exit the game and re-open it). If I turn the console off and have to go through the “loading preferences” step, the game takes 14 minutes. Once the game loads, the latency is routinely 25 ms and I don’t get disconnected. If it was a throttling issue, wouldn’t the problem be intermittent and continue to present connectivity issues throughout gameplay?
Hello, I downloaded another free to play game (Roblox) as a test, and it loads just fine. If it was the hard drive, I think I would have 1) seen issues with other games 2) have resolved the issue when I uninstalled and reinstalled OW2.
Do you know anything about the sequence of steps the game goes through when it launches? I saw the game say “loading preferences”, then “signing into xbox… “, and At some point “searching for game server” (they are hard to read as all but “loading preferences” finish rapidly). Maybe if I understand the loading preferences step, I can home in on the problem
Unfortunately, no, I don’t know about the sequence because I only play on PC. Troubleshooting for consoles has always been limited, since they don’t offer as many diagnostics as PCs.
One thing you haven’t mentioned, which lots of people mentioned as the solution on Reddit, is hard resetting your Xbox. You hold the power button on the console for one minute, and keep holding even after it shuts down.