Those who want to get in on the very first day will have to play a game of “Gears of War: Ultimate Edition” on either the Xbox One or on Windows 10 until April 11. After that, they should automatically have access to the initial round of the game’s beta. It’s not clear if there will be any other benefits for eligible players, as there hasn’t been an announcement about that yet.
Of course, we don’t expect that the developers will give any actual gameplay bonuses to specific players. That would partially defeat the purpose of using the beta to figure out balance issues, and it would also undermine the confidence of players in the full release.
April should be a very interesting month for fans of the franchise in any case, and we expect to see lots of exciting moments captured during the beta as gamers discover new techniques and things they can do, while developers hurry to fix any gamebreaking bugs that are discovered.
For many gamers, an open beta for a game they have been anticipating for a long time is a special moment as it often gives them a chance to experience the product exactly the way the developers intended, before all the major balance changes start rolling in. And for this reason, during these periods we often see various memorable incidents in gaming communities, and we tend to hear a lot from both gamers and developers alike.