Just FYI Madden 12 at E3 was the alpha build of the game

[jpdavis82]

jpdavis1982 Josh Davis
@adembroski What stage of the game are we seeing at E3? Is this alpha or beta?

adembroski AJ Dembroski
@
@jpdavis1982 alpha, though though what knowing that tells you, I dunno

[Hova57]

that's a little scary considering how good it looks now. so there can be some tweaks man there is still a whole month and half to go with madden dev tweaking and tuning.

[Tecmo Bowl]

Is that good or bad? Not sure where alpha falls in the cycle

[Matt Diesel]

in simple terms:

pre-alpha -> alpha -> beta -> release candidate -> release (gold)


So, alpha is fairly early in the life cycle but is considered feature complete.

[BestServedCold]

Quote: Originally Posted by Tecmo Bowl

Is that good or bad? Not sure where alpha falls in the cycle

Pre-build (introduce all of the major changes)
Alpha (still has room for improvements)
Beta (testing stage for minor tweaks)
Gold (finished product)