[briz1046]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aestis

It is mind numbing to me that some people believe a closed beta program could be about hype/marketing. The vast majority of casual customers have zero clue a beta is going on or care. The beta is something fairly hardcore players will want to engage in and actually provide quality feedback. No marketing team would invest dollars in a beta. That is funded by the production/development/QA side. Some people will twist anything EA ever does to make them seem awful. I don't like being an EA shill because there's plenty of legitimate criticism to go around. But come on. Closed betas are common. Open betas are not. Closed betas serve a purpose and hype isn't it.

In theory I agree with you , however the way This one was done is the reason to believe that marketing had some call over this

If it was simply a matter of getting feedback all they needed to do was select the participants by whatever criteria they chose and announce it to those people

The fact is though that it has been used to promote you tube channels , Twitter accounts and so on , often discussed as little more than a chance to play the game early or demo

Not saying this necessarily to be critical , EA is a business whose purpose is to make money for it's stockholders , but to deny that this has been used as a marketing tool is in my mind naive