FishyJoe on 20 October 2008
Traditionally betas are used to do final product testing, however marketers have seemed to hijack the term to use as marketing demos. I remember when beta testing actually meant something and you had to actually do work to maintain your status as a tester. Now it seems betas are nothing more than a promotional tool used to build hype for a game, since there is no realistic way to make changes after a product has already shipped.
At what point did betas go from the hands of developers to the hands of the marketing team?
