Betas Cost You Money on the PS3
Marc Kusnierz | Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 6:25AM 
First the Socom: Confrontation beta and now Resistance 2. I have heard that the first beta keys will go to those who pre-order the game and the rest go to Qore a week or two later. If that's true it makes this "deal" even more shitty and pathetic. Pay for Qore and you get the privilege to join in on a beta after it's already been running for a few weeks. Hooray. Paying for betas on any console pisses me off because the point of a beta is to help the developers test the game out and find any bugs or glitches while you're doing it. Why should we have to pay to help out a company make their game better? Makes no sense, but c'est la vie. Betas are not supposed to be glorified early exclusive demos, but that seems to be the way things are headed now...
This Qore Resistance 2 beta situation is horrible, but will it stop? Absolutely not...and that's because people are going to buy the hell out of the third episode just to get into the beta. Sony will see this and say to themselves, "We know they really want this, but let's make them pay for it! We are geniuses!" Sony doesn't really have to worry too much because people still seem to have Sony up on this god-like pedestal and see no wrong from the company.
Reader Comments (2)
Oh no sir, you have it all wrong! You're not paying for a beta or exclusive demo, those are free! [After the purchase of a episode of Qore for $2.99]
People are impatient. They want to play a game they are anticipating as soon as possible, and they're willing to pay money to play a buggy version of it. One argument for "paying for a beta," from people I've talked to is that if Qore didn't exist, they would never have access to the exclusive beta anyway.
So why does Sony think it's okay to do this? Well, they really believe it's like a print magazine except in video format. So imagine it being like GameInformer or EGM getting exclusive demos and betas. Except you know, there's other worthwhile content in the magazine unlike Qore which has almost the same exact interviews and previews I can see on gametrailers. (Oops, did I say that out loud?)
I <3 Kush