343 Industries has officially stated that will break from Halo development tradition and not release a public multiplayer beta for Halo 4 prior to the game’s launch this Holiday season.
Responding to a question from a fan, a 343 Industries representative explained “While we are testing Halo 4 code, gameplay, and systems at significant scale to get excellent data, input, and feedback, we are focused on polishing and shipping our experience for the duration of the year, and splitting resources to manage and build a beta is not on our schedule,”
There has always been a debate surrounding just how useful public betas are, because the time required to develop and run them takes resources away from development of the actual game, so it’s not surprising that 343 Industries feels comfortable skipping the beta.
However, the lack of a beta for Halo 4 does mean that Microsoft will lose out on an opportunity to tie the beta to the release of another game. The Halo 3 beta code that came with the original Crackdown played a huge part in making the new IP successful, and it probably would have been wise to do something similar with Halo 4.
Source: MCV
