Well I’ve felt the need to post about something, so I won’t necessarily keep posts to the topic of XEv5 after all…
Speaking of XEv5, I’ll give you all a little update while I’m here. I’ve actually had some time to work on it over the last few weeks. My original plan was to relaunch on July 13th and a few weeks ago I didn’t think that was possible - but I do actually think that’s a possibility now. I might still wait until I can get lots of media and content added before I relaunch though - so July 13th might not be the date I decide on.
What I’ve been doing recently is working on the front page and the caching system. The main aim of recoding the front page is to get all content on it instead of just news - which I have managed to do through the wonders of arrays. News, reviews, previews and interviews will all appear on the front page automatically, and there will be an option for the staff to add manual updates such as media being added and other pages being updated. The caching system turned out to be relatively easy to code, thanks to PHP’s output buffer. Most pages will be cached for a number of minutes (currently 30, but that’s easy to change) and there will also be a full section on the Admin Panel about it so that staff can force the cached files to be updated (on an individual page and whole site basis). Apart from that, I’ve been adding a few games and some media, so that’s the start of that process too. I hope to have the best selling Xbox games and ALL Xbox 360 games added to the site by the relaunch, and as much media as possible for each game.
Anyway, onto the main reason for this post - you know what really grinds my gears? Online betas. There seems to be an influx of beta opportunities these days and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s becoming a tired idea. I know developers must get a lot of feedback from beta programmes, but I for one am tired of seeing them appearing. The reason I thought about making a post about this is because I just read that Tom Clancy’s EndWar will be having a private beta on Xbox LIVE. What happened to the days where developers did internal beta testing? Most of the games seemed to turn out OK without beta testing over LIVE, so why is there a sudden influx of beta programmes now? Especially now since updates for games can be released over Xbox LIVE, so issues found after release can be easily fixed.
What annoys me more is “private” betas. Surely the point of having an external beta programme is to get as many people playing the game at once as possible - so why limit it to people that can get their hands on an activation code? Let everyone download it or there’s not much point to doing it in the first place.
Another reason I don’t like betas is that it’s just like a really early demo that’s possibly prone to crashing. Why give people a chance to play it if it’s nowhere near finished and could go wrong at any time? And if it doesn’t go wrong, why is it a beta? If it’s that close to being finished then why do it in the first place? Also, for big, high-profile releases, it’s just another way to hype up the game even more than it should.
One of the most well-known Xbox LIVE beta programmes is probably for Halo 3. Did this help Bungie with their programming and help them finish the game off? Probably. But did this hype the game up to massive proportions and end up making the final release a bit of an anti-climax? Probably. Case in point.
Let me know if you’re fed up of beta programmes too…
(N.B. I’ve disabled comments on this post due to high amounts of spam.)