We all were around for the Reach Beta and that alone turned thousands of gamers away from the Halo series. I think this could be a reason they are not considering a BETA for Halo 4. Then again, I like their approach as releasing the game and then making changes to fit the community as it will get the game to market faster.
From the way the game is sounding, they want to give the impression they want to be competitive and such, but they don’t want a BETA because it sounds also like Reach. Many times they’ve talked about getting to the core of Halo and even referencing Halo 2/3, but then say but different.
This will be my first Halo that is a rent before buying, I’m not having another Reach on my hands. I gave my Xbox to a friend for 5 months as I was traveling with work and that’s the majority of my games played. Even at that, it’s over a year and hardly 1,200 games played, which is sad compared to the 10K-20K Halo 3 games played. Only so many because tournament were fun.
Time will tell, but I think there is no BETA as they want to sell games, and not scare people away like Reach’s BETA.