Why does Madden hesitate to do a public beta?

[MJenness]

I'm just curious as to why they scoff at the idea, as it would obviously help find more of the glaring issues that QC misses every year! Then maybe we could have a fully plyable/working game at release rather than waiting months for patches.

Please don't answer "we are the beta testers every year"...not the response I'm looking for.

[Valdarez]

Quote: Originally Posted by MJenness

Please don't answer "we are the beta testers every year"...not the response I'm looking for.

Well there goes my answer...

How soon does the demo come out? It might be they are using it to find bugs before the release, that is if it comes out early enough.

[MJenness]

Quote: Originally Posted by Valdarez

Well there goes my answer... How soon does the demo come out? It might be they are using it to find bugs before the release, that is if it comes out early enough.

Only problem with that is the demos they've put out for Madden previously, well, they sucked because they were SO bare bones....think it was 09s where you couldn't even play on the defensive side of the ball.

Pretty tough to look for flaws if you can't see the whole picture, more or less.

[JMD]

I think it's because different people look for different things in a sports game. What I feel is a problem others will be fine with, so there would be so many "issues" they wouldn't know where to start. The same reason only a select few are invited to preview the game each year instead of hundreds. To many cooks in the kitchen.

I don't know the people that test Madden each year. I don't know if they are:
1. Just regular people and that is their job, or
2. If they are huge football fans and really know the game.

If the answer is 1. then is should be 2.

[MJenness]

Quote: Originally Posted by JMD

I think it's because different people look for different things in a sports game. What I feel is a problem others will be fine with, so there would be so many "issues" they wouldn't know where to start. The same reason only a select few are invited to preview the game each year instead of hundreds. To many cooks in the kitchen. I don't know the people that test Madden each year. I don't know if they are: 1. Just regular people and that is their job, or 2. If they are huge football fans and really know the game. If the answer is 1. then is should be 2.

But QA is really only about bugs/glitches/broken elements of the game....not about changing gameplay or adding things.
Yet, we can't seem to get through a year where there aren't GLARING problems such as franchise freezes, non-working sliders or things of this nature....it'd just be nice to see the basic elements of the game WORK properly.

[splff3000]

I think the problem is that EA is still living with the archaic notion that someone wants to steal their ideas. I remember back when there was football competition, EA used to always play there cards close to their chest. They didn't reveal a whole lot of features until late in the cycle because they always worried about some other game company( 2k) stealing their idea and placing it in their own game. There were no blogs, community interaction, or anything like that because EA was worried about the competition stealing their ideas.

In the past, most of the info on Madden didn't come out until E3. While most of the big info STILL doesn't come out until E3, there is much more info released before then nowadays than there was in the past. Because EA is stuck in this mind state, they would never let anyone beta test until late in the dev cycle so that no info would "leak" out to the "competition", competition that doesn't exist nowadays.

Another reason could be for the fear of bad impressions which would result in a loss of sales. As we all know, a lot of people are not enamored with Madden nowadays. If they have a beta test and the beta is not well received, even though it's just a beta, the bad publicity could hurt sales. For example, say EA let us beta test and a whole bunch of people come out and say that the passing and running are all still the same as years before. Guess what? The guy that was hoping that they changed that is not gonna want to buy the game because that's what he wanted them to change. This might be a bad example, but I think you guys get what I'm trying to say.

The final reason, and probably the real reason for EA, is that the game will sell, regardless, so why bother? The game HAS sold regardless lol. The game has had glitches where franchises freeze up, games freeze up, fatigue not working at all, fumble glitches, WR snap glitches, disconnect glitches, Brett Favre glitches, ball go through defender/receiver glitches, moon walking glitch, field goal glitch, offsides glitch, flying safety glitches, rocket catch glitches, players disappearing in the second half of games glitches, and last but not least, our old friend the nano blitz. These are just the ones that I can come up with off the top of my head. Who knows what'll happen if I actually start looking for more. Yet, with all of this, the game still sells millions every year. So why have an open beta? They're going to buy the game every year anyway, regardless.

[coogrfan]

Forgive my ignorance, but are there any annually released sports titles that have done this?

[RGiles36]

Quote: Originally Posted by JMD

I think it's because different people look for different things in a sports game. What I feel is a problem others will be fine with, so there would be so many "issues" they wouldn't know where to start. The same reason only a select few are invited to preview the game each year instead of hundreds. To many cooks in the kitchen.

...well said.