Gears of War executive producer Rod Fergusson has told CVG that while Epic doesn’t have a strict target persé, they are expecting about a million Gears of War 3 beta players. He said they don’t really care to beat a specific target or to reach a record number of players, but that the focus is on getting as many players as possible to yield the data to help create a better game.
Data gained from a beta can be highly valuable for a company that is willing to invest in the costly process, as studios pay more and more attention to both bugs found in a beta and potential player experience issues that may arise. The more people play it, the better Epic can tell which weapons need tweaking, which maps might need some slight redesigns, and things like that.
The Gears of War 3 beta can be accessed by Bulletstorm: Epic Edition owners on April 18th, and by people who pre-ordered Gears of War 3 on April 25th. As Bulletstorm only sold 279,000 copies in the first couple of weeks, that will require quite a lot of pre-orders to make a million.
Epic expecting Gears 3 beta to top a million [CVG]
