It looks like Microsoft might be planning a public beta for the recently announced Gears of War Reloaded so we can test if wall-bouncing and Gnasher spamming still the best strategy. Spoiler alert: it will be.
The smoking Lancer in this case is SteamDB, a very handy website which tracks games on Steam, giving us all sorts of fun player count information and much more. On May 22, a Gears of War Reloaded beta popped up and was being played by just one person. Since then a few more people have fired up the beta, bringing the total players to 4. In fact, as I write this those four accounts have been in the beta for about 3 hours non-stop. Bloody try-hards.
The obvious implication is that Microsoft and The Coalition are planning a public beta, perhaps to be announced at the upcoming Xbox Showcase on June 8, ahead of its full release on August 26. I’d also expect to see a trailer, too, since the announcement was oddly lacking one.
Presumably the beta will also be open across Xbox and PlayStation, and will at least partially serve as a test to ensure the planned crossplay between all platforms is working smoothly and that the servers are running well. But the biggest reason is likely the same as it always is this close to launch: marketing. This is going to be the first Gears of War game on a PlayStation console (well, nearly. Footage of Gears of War running on a PS3 surfaced years ago, and former IGN journalist Colin Moriarty has openly talked about actually playing it back in the day) and Microsoft will want to drum up some attention for it.
Marcus Fenix on PlayStation. Truly, we live in strange times, friends.