I came across this Penny Arcade Extra Credits video and thought it probably explains really well why we didn’t see any beta for Halo 4. If we had, how many of us would have bought the game?
The video explains that we give publishers incentive NOT to offer betas when the game is not what we want, and we then go and buy it to find out if it is good. Our purchase behavior gives publishers incentive not to beta poor games…
Not saying Halo 4 is a poor game, but that the incentive is to not show what you have if you want the public to buy first.
I still think there should have been a beta. It’s always smart to test how well your game plays and what features work and what doesn’t. That way you will get rid of as many problems as early as possible.
Because it was Bungies last Halo game so they probably didn’t give a crap, or they where just sure of it selling off the hype of it being their last Halo.
> > > So why did Halo:Reach have a beta?
> >
> > To sell ODST.
>
> ODST would have sold regardless of the beta. The beta had nothing to do with it selling you tool. get online
It had a lot to do with ODST’s success. If you got ODST, you got exclusive access to the Reach beta. That’s why they announced both ODST and Reach at the same time.
I made a topic during the start of “Forward Unto Dawn” about how 343 or Microsoft should have put money into a Halo 4 beta instead of FUD and I recieved nothing but -Yoink- from it. Now nobody talks about or probably even remembers FUD, yet there are topics stacked upon topics on the problems of Halo 4.
There definitely should have been a beta. It may have caught at least some of the huge issues that Halo 4 has like forge and the lack of file sharing, and maybe trickled down to fix smaller problems like tweaking the DMR, boltshot or certain AA’s and perks, or even map flow before release.
get online