Call it a phenomenon, call it perfect timing, call it great marketing: the Titanfall beta ended last week and, according to Respawn’s Community Manager Abbie Heppe, around 2 million players took part. That’s a big beta.
At one point last week, it did occur to me that the Titanfall beta may have been more about getting word of the game out to potential customers than actually testing out the game itself.It’s pretty close to release — coming out in two weeks. Realistically, there is very little that can be changed about the game at this stage. It’s a brilliant strategy for a game like Titanfall — a new IP on a new console that’s actually a little bit brilliant. Let the people try before they buy.
In that sense, the Titanfall beta was really a little bit like an old school demo, updated for the modern era. Like a level on a demo disc.
But according to Respawn, the team learned plenty for the beta and they plan to apply those learnings before the game’s release.
“We found probably 10 real things that we worked on and fixed,” Respawn’s Jon Shiring told Polygon. “That’s 10 things we don’t have to find on launch day. We still might find some new things on launch day, but at least those ones are not there anymore.”
Now that the Titanfall beta is over, are you missing it? Are you more likely to buy Titanfall as a result of playing it?
What did the Titanfall beta achieve? [Polygon]
Comments
46 responses to “The Titanfall Beta Had Around 2 Million Players”
I requested a beta key and got one in a matter of minutes. Avoided all the hype and bs, tried the game and must say I can’t wait for it to be released now.
Exactly this, avoided all info on it while on holidays came back, asked support for key, got it in minutes tested, now very excited for the game.
The beta was probably the most polished beta ive ever experienced, so the idea that it was more a demo makes more sense.
After playing it on the beta weekend, I was so amped up to play it again. I ended up taking an (unrelated) sick day on Friday, and was super disappointed to see that the beta had already closed.
I need my Titanfall fix man!
More testing the network systems, I’d guess. Something other online games could use
There’s 12 off my friends buying it day one for a Xbox LAN on the 15th. My group is excited.
So who’s the poor bastard that has to sit out? 😉
Good spot….well there’s 12 including myself, were good mates.
Can you even LAN with it though?
Prob not, but the place has got a 100mb connection….so hopefully be ok
good ping?
Were in WA so its good to SE Asia.. I will make a few vids of game play and post them after the Lan….fingers crossed we get a full house as it will be a good test run 😀
so, 12 machines sharing a connection?
Yep….”online LANs” like this have worked fine before….most guys have shitty connections so still better what they have at home lol
radical
Can’t wait for it had so much fun on the beta
It’d be interesting to see a breakdown of that 2M in terms of platform and also average play time.
I know a few people who would be double counted as they compared PC to Xbox One to determine which they would eventually buy – and a few others who downloaded it but only played for an hour or so.
Any chance they’ve released more data, Mark?
I don’t know about claiming that milestone, the beta kinda was open. I’m pretty sure with the low amount of next-gen games being out that many people had time to spare for something that was free. That number is also counting everybody who touched, including the people who played it for 5 minutes and quit. I’d be more interested in finding out any walls that prevented people from playing to improve the overall game.
I wish, 3/5 of my group were unable to get keys for PC beta, me and the one that did had a hell of a time though.
Didn’t the beta on PC go open after the weekend though? It did on Xbox One, they still could’ve gotten in a few days of play.
I was aware of the Xbox One going open and I heard news of the PC to follow, but they never received beta keys nor did the game show up in their Origin “My Games” tab.
Ah, I didn’t realise. That sucks.
More importantly the server backend didn’t burst into flames.
That’s probably because the game uses Windows Azure servers instead of EA’s Origin servers
The servers did go offline for several hours… according to the Polygon piece they were sweating bullets to fix that particular bug.
I was actually happy to see that Titanfall was already a well oiled machine. I would hope under normal circumstances as a BETA like this should be used for balancing – which is exactly what Respawn appear to be doing. IF they found the odd bug or 2 and are getting them fixed too then all the better.
I can honestly say Titanfall may not be most anticipated game – but if I was to buy on day 1 (and I may) at least I know I’ll be buying with confidence that we won’t see day 1 issues so common with online games these days.
Yeah I cant remember encountering any glitches. Very well done. I guess the focus was an mp game with main thing to work on were the mechanics. No single player campaign, which would cut the workload in half. No need to focus on some encouunters or whatever that will only ever be in single player.
Really looking forward to it.
I was always gonna get it, but the beta definitely got me more hyped.
I’ll be buying this two days early from xbox.com/en-us and loading it up on my AU XB1 🙂
The beta was smoother than Battlefield 4 which has been out since console launch! I suspect it was more about load testing servers than anything.
Yep. I’ll be doing the same if I decide to cancel the $9000 collector edition statue.
…don’t judge me
I thought MS removed this from the Xbox Store so that it didn’t canabalise EA’s physical retail sales? I know that they pulled the preorder from the marketplace last week.
Yea but the yank release is two days earlier than the AU release. It’ll be online then, you just can’t pre order or “pre-load”. So I’ll still have it two days earlier than AU release, or one day earlier due to time difference really.
You do realise MS tightened up the Terms of Use about buying in different geographical markets by deception. Don’t get me wrong, I bought a whole heap from the US store in the 360 days, but I’m no hurry to have my shiny new Xbox One or 7 year old account blocked if they decide to drop the ban hammer like they did last year…Buyer beware!
What deception? My address and everything is set to AU, I just go to en-us xbox store, and buy with my paypal account as they wont accept non-US credit cards. Then the game pops up in my AU account on my AU region console ready to download. 360 was a lot more screwing around with geolocked accounts, One has global accounts, just like Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. The only limiting factor is your console region restricting the store you see. It’s no different to downloading the Hulu/Netflix apps, and I do the same thing on Windows 8 to get applications months before they bother ticking the box to enable it on the AU store.
FYI
http://www.gamepur.com/news/13547-microsoft-quietly-region-lock-xbox-one-digital-games-and-dlc-error-code-0x8.html
I bought Lego Marvel since then, no issue. Also own Max and BF 4 Premium from the US store. I’m not buying redemption codes though, I’m buying games directly from my AU account. I want to own digital this Gen, but I’m not paying more than a shitty DRM check disc based game to do so.
Seriously, they can’t claim there is any difference between disc based and digital. Hell you can even install the disc based version of a game and then buy digital so you don’t need a disc, without reinstalling. They’re exactly the same except the disc based DRM.
Forums seem to be indicating it might be the seller, not Microsoft. Everyone having the issue seems to of bought from the same ebay seller.
To use a racing analogy I feel respawn has made a well oiled machine that could tear anything up. However a good race car is useless without a decent set of tyres. Microsoft supplying their servers from Singapore is doing a real disservice to us here. It’s playable but no where near what it could be.
considering the product is only online but the servers are not in the country and the product is “faulty” maybe that would be enough to ask the ACCC… even if it’s not enough for serious clout maybe poking ACCC means they’ll poke EA just enough to give us servers. Although blizzard activision did that a mega level. Still it feels like enough of a precedent, no single player means selling something that’s straight up goofed. Not even a matter of logistics, they haven’t implemented microtransactions. Being source engine they should really facilitate servers in Australia i don’t even.
The ACCC would tell you there’s nothing they could do unless you were promised local servers or a guaranteed level of latency and no company is mad enough to do that. Game Experience May Change Online is pretty much enough to get them out of a lot of situations unless the game is downright unplayable and “a bit laggy” certainly isn’t enough to qualify. If you had more than a second of lag on even the best connection with a verified perfectly functional net connection and a minimum number of hops to the server, you’d still be very unlikely to get anything more than a sympathetic “yeah that sucks”
No single player can be a good thing. Look at team fortress. Less focus on a single play kind of game and more focus on the mechanics that really make the game feel good when you play it. A lot of people just beat the campaign and drop the rest within a week or two. I have a feeling this will be more played this way and the campaign could always be added on later as an extra.
I actually had very good ping, the worst being around the 138ms mark. Quite happy to play even at that level.
Should quantify, ADSL 2+ in suburban Adelaide 10mins nth of the CBD.
The beta was for 2 things:
1. Word of mouth marketing (you don’t honestly think they sent all those extra beta keys by mistake do you?).
2. Stress testing for the multiplayer and Azure cloud servers.
As for comments about poor performance you have to factor in 100-120ms average to Singapore for Aussie. I agree local Melb+Syd are sorely needed, especially with over 2.5million XBL subscribers here in Aus. Now think about how low local servers are going to be? Maybe 30-75ms? What about WA to SYD for example? 50-100ms? It’s not a far shot off the mark really, I was impressed with the shot registration, player movements, syncing etc even on Oceania servers over local Aussie ones. Can’t wait for local XBL servers!
Really!! Where is that statistic. Last time any real sales numbers were published the 360 had sold 1 million consoles here – not all of those would be online so 2.5m is a phenomenal increase from 2010
I feel like a little part of me died when the beta went down. Definitely buying this game when it’s available.
Definitely getting this game when it is released.
Been reluctant to go back to BF4 after playing the beta. Guess deep down inside me, I love a fast paced game.
Stability was very impressive. No crashes or in-game glitches. Like someone else mentioned, more polished than BF4.
What really surprised me was the netcode! Even playing at 150ms using an Asian server, the hit registration was good, no obvious lag and “around the corner deaths”.
At those sorts of numbers, its more of an unfinished demo than a beta.