Destiny beta being treated like a full launch, says Bungie
Destiny's beta has been confirmed for 2014 with pre-orders, and Bungie is taking the whole thing very seriously.
Yesterday, we reported that the Destiny beta will be granted to pre-order customers in 2014. Check out the details here.
Speaking with GamespotAU, Bungie community manager Eric Osborne was asked how the studio is approaching the beta, seeing as a game like Destiny hasn't been achieved before on consoles.
He replied, "We supported some pretty big, enduring gaming communities over the past decade, but we haven't sat around giving each other high fives these past few years. We went out and recruited some of the most talented and experienced people we could find. We brought in hundreds of fans to play embarrassingly early builds of Destiny in our labs, collecting millions of data points. We've built technology specifically suited to deliver Destiny's core pillars, enabling living worlds that feel like places you visit, filled with great action and adventure that gets your heart pumping, and offering up persistence of character that lets players become legends.
"The Destiny beta, in many ways, is being treated like a full product launch. We can't just carve out three competitive multiplayer maps this time around. We'd only be gathering data on one facet of the overall experience--one that is arguably the least resource intensive and most well understood by our team. Destiny demands more."
When asked how the beta will compare to Bungie's Halo betas in the past, Osborne added, "Our ambition is to build big, rich destinations that players can visit over and over again, to fill them up with great story and moments that they can share with their friends, and to deliver face melting action that leads to treasure, challenge, and discovery. We want to pour all of that secret sauce into the Destiny beta. It's a massive undertaking, but one that we believe will pay huge dividends for us, and for our players."
You can check out my own interview with Bungie on the who, what and why of Destiny here. It's big.