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Originally Posted by jbone
Raidergoo,
You're not the first person to mention the idea of delivering a public beta. Personally, I have never experienced that - how would it work exactly? Would people pay for the beta version, or would it be free? I imagine it would be hard to charge for a beta version of a game. Is SI willing to publicly release a beta version of the game?
Jamie
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That's a question best addressed by people way above my pay grade.
If it were me, it would be a public beta for those who preordered. That gets the eLicense in people's hands to ensure that the developers get paid. Many eyes would scan many areas in many different ways. The in-house beta team collates trouble tickets in Tech support, and tests new builds that come out once every 2-3 days. A new build goes public once every week. After six weeks, the game goes 1.0.0.
Imagine it this way. Take what happened in late May 2006 forward to mid March 2007. Release a public beta in as good a shape as possible, and call the scrubbed up version ( 12662 in this case ) 1.0.0 over to the public on or about April 13th, 2007.
That gives the public a month on the new code. By dumping 1000 bugs into Test Track, and FTP'ing 100 sets of .dat files to SI, it will profoundly make things better.
Preorder people can either be a part of the sausage making process, or delay for 1.0.0. People that are hard to persuade and are sitting on their wallets can see the sausage being made. TRTR was terribly cool ( and eagerly anticipated here for the upcoming winter ), but I think it would be a fantastic sales tool to have a Tech forum with a bunch of answered complaints and documented fixes.
This gives reviewers a great product to look at when the time comes.
This gives the SI team 2-3 months post release to refine the game once released generally.
I'd throw in a 10% discount around the All Star break, and again in mid Oct.