Battlefield 3 developer DICE reckons there has been a “misunderstanding” among gamers concerning the concept of a beta test.
The studio’s comments come in light of recent criticism surrounding the hotly-anticipated military shooter’s multiplayer teaser, which contained a few bugs in the mix.
“Yeah, I think there’s been a misunderstanding of the term ‘beta test’,” said DICE’s Patrick Liu, during a chat with The Guardian.
“We ran the alpha tests with a rush map and we wanted to have some sort of reference so we could compare results – so we needed to have more-or-less the same map. But we do understand the concerns that we didn’t show a conquest map, but we have demoed Caspian Border, and we did run a conquest map as a limited PC-only test.”
Liu explained that the purpose of the beta is to test the game’s backend and iron out any kinks ahead of the shooter’s launch later this month.
“Yeah, we just wanted to know it wouldn’t crash and burn at launch,” he commented.
“It was horrible with Battlefield 1943 – it sold ten times the numbers we thought it would, and it was down for three or four days which is really bad. We don’t want to go through that again.”
Elsewhere, Liu also hinted at the possibility of a new entry in the Bad Company spin-off series.
“Well, we haven’t killed Bad Company! But we can only make so many games. Be patient – there might be something else coming up…”
Battlefield 3 is scheduled for release on October 25 for PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360.