First we had Home Beta Announced and Launched

Then WarHawk

Now we have KillZone 2 Beta confirmed.

http://www.psu.com/node/11015 

nice lets see if it live up to the trailer

Very nice, wish I had access to the Home Beta to see what's up.

Is it just me or does it seem like more and more developers are producing demos and calling them (open) betas in order to give a sense of exclusivity and build hype?

I'm not just talking about the PS3 here either, I started seeing this 4 or 5 years ago on PC games after developers were starting beta tests and had hundreds of thousands of people sign up. It seems that many of these (so called) betas now a days start far too close to when the game is released and don't have much of an impact on the end product.

Yeah really. I'm not sure how much the Halo 3 beta is contributing to the game, either. The first I heard of this Halo 3 beta I thought hype, especially when it was packaged with another game purchase (Crackdown). Oh well, hopefully I can get involved in one of these betas...

 Killzone isn't the most expenisve game ever/in development. Besides that, a big budget didn't make Dai Katana any better...

Motorstorm is nowhere near that trailer, especially in motion. And theres no chance in hell Killzone will be the same as the trailer, especially in motion/physics.

I thought Betas were more for stress testing servers and other "behind the scenes" type stuff rather than improving upon obvious core elements of a game.  But yeah I'm with you guys. All this Beta talk is getting ridiculous. Halo 3 is the biggest culprit. I've never seen so much hype for a game that has been perpetuated by the company developing the game. Nintendo's got it right; show as little as possible and execute the delivery as flawlessly as possible. At this point MS doesn't stand a chance of meeting the expectations for Halo 3. From the screenshots and the early reports, the game sounds like more of the same. Throw in the fact that the competition has stepped up their game since Halo 2 with games like Ghost Recon, Gears of War, and Resistance, I have a hard time believing Halo 3's gonna be an ascendant experience. Oh well, I guess it doesn't matter. It'll sell 3 million+ copies and sell extra 360s, which is all that really matters to the suits. My prediction is that this is the peak of Halo-mania. 

What'll be interesting to see unfold is the "next big thing." Every generation or two has those one or two games that define it. Last gen was Halo + GTA, which carried over into this gen. The PS1 gen was all about the RPG, FF in particular, which carried over into the last generation. My guess for this gen would be Wii Sports, or the Wii controller in general. 

 Beta tests are there to find bugs that the developer missed mainly. 

From what I've read it's also for multiplayer balancing issues.