Respawn Entertainment announced that Titanfall’s recent beta tests attracted more than 2 million players. The beta was open to Xbox One players on February 15 before coming to PC, reaching the amazing figure by the end of February 19.
The Beta attracted 2 million unique players over the 4 days that it was available. The beta was a crucial step in the company’s plans to roll out its first game in mid-March, without any of the disastrous issues that have affected so many other online gaming launches *ehem* Defiance.
Jon Shiring, Respawn engineer told Polygon that not only was the beta a clear promotional benefit, it was also an important test for Xbox Live compute, Microsoft’s cloud technology. He said:
“The game is completed reliant on it. If it’s down, nobody can play”
This might cause some problems to those eager to play Titanfall 24/7, but like everything, there may be times that it will be down. After all the roaring reviews that beta itself was given, this would possibly be the only downside that the game currently has.
On a brighter note, Respawn Entertainment’s Community Manager Abbie Heppe told Polygon, when talking about having a ‘bug-free’ launch that:
“You never want to say that everything is going to be perfect. Obviously there are things that can change. Bu, you don’t want to say ‘oh, no, there will still be problems’, because you don’t want to give people a lack of confidence in what you’re doing. I think that this beta was really about giving people confidence that not only will we be communicative with them, but we’re actively trying to work out any bugs now”.
So, even with the beta testing, there is no guarantee that the launch will be bug free. However, John Shiring stated that while Respawn may still find problems at launch, the beta helped them find 10 “real things” that they worked on and fixed.
One major result that Respawn didn’t plan for is that the beta would lead to a leak about Titanfall. Savvy data miners managed to unearth the names of 14 potential maps that could feature in the full game. Read more about these maps HERE.
Titanfall will be released on Xbox One and PC on March 11 in North America, March 14 in Europe ad March 15 in UK. It will be released late March on Xbox 360.
Source: Polygon, DigitalSpy, GamingBolt, Gamespot
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