Hope you weren’t super turbo excited for the Street Fighter V beta over the weekend, because the thing was a complete stuff-up. So much so that the whole thing was called off, and won’t be back until “the experience is going to be a positive one for players.”
The announcement was made in a very apologetic blog post on Capcom’s community site, which reads:
Capcom offers its sincerest apologies to everyone who participated in this first beta test. While the purpose of a beta is to work out these types of issues, it was very clear that the issues we faced were more severe than we were prepared for. After three days of testing, while we were making progress and collecting valuable data, we felt the majority of players were not having a good experience, and the best course of action would be to take the servers offline for extended maintenance. We will be postponing our first beta phase until we believe the experience is going to be a positive one for players.
To be clear, this first beta test attempt will not count toward our previously announced beta test allotments. There will still be at least three full beta tests prior to the game’s launch. So for those in the Americas that feel disappointed that they were not able to experience their pre-order incentive, there will be plenty of opportunities prior to launch to experience the game.
Additionally, we are working on a worthwhile in-game incentive for the players that participated in the first beta test. While we can’t confirm specifics just yet, we will have more details on this in the coming weeks.
To all of the European and Asian players that felt like they were missing out on the beta since we limited it to North America on Friday and Saturday, we apologise for the inconvenience. Due to the state of the server issues, we had to limit the numbers to a smaller pool in order to identify issues and potential solutions. Either way, we will still be providing these players with an incentive as well, as all territories were inconvenienced.
To all of the players that participated and supported us through this initial phase, we cannot thank you enough. We understand how frustrating it is to be so close to playing the game you are excited for, and to not have it working. The whole team here is very disappointed that we were unable to deliver a proper beta experience this time. Thank you so much for your continued support, and we promise that we will have a better experience for you with the future betas.
We will be sharing more details when available, but for now, we appreciate your patience as we work on solutions to offer the experience that we had intended.
It’s cool that Capcom is making this up to people, I guess, but… This is a beta! Video games, if you could think of a better term for this kind of bonus access, that would be great, because the point of a beta (as they even say in the post!) is to test stuff for the actual release, and this was certainly a test Capcom learned some stuff from.
Comments
7 responses to “Street Fighter V Beta Postponed Until It Actually Works”
The way it went, it felt like it was more an alpha than a beta. Obviously I don’t know the details of what went wrong or where the development was at but the term “beta” is generally reserved for when you have a feature complete product that needs to have the final polish and adjustments applied to it. Alphas are when you have a core functional product and want to start getting feedback on how certain systems work and hold up under common use. Or at least that’s the ideal that most people use. Rarely does it work out that way.
Something like that, or in simpler terms: Alpha is where you put all the good stuff in, beta is where you bugtest the shit out of it. More or less what happens these days with the bulk of early access games, though not many seem to ever leave alpha…
Those definitions are fine for those actually working on a project, but I think when it comes to getting the general public involved they probably figure it’s too complicated having alphas and betas and whatever else and expecting the people to understand the difference. I think when it comes to dealing with the public, “beta” is just used as a catch-all phrase to indicate testing of an unfinished product.
True, although most of the time “beta” == “finished product” in most people’s minds.
I guess they can try asking for their money back if they don’t like it 😛
beta results: Buy more servers.
I’m curious as to how many people got past the title screen and actually saw gameplay. If Twitter and Message Boards are to be believed, virtually no one saw gameplay
Its a Beta, it aint gonna work perfectly.
This is what Beta’s are for….