14 DAY TRIAL // The multiplayer beta stage for Gears of War 3 is going to appear "sometime around April," according to the Mike Capps, the president of the title's developer, Epic Games.
Gears of War 3 was set to be launched next spring, but due to business reasons, it was pushed back into the fall of 2011.
This allowed the company to announce that it would hold a multiplayer beta stage in order to test out the new dedicated server infrastructure.
Now, after revealing that the Epic edition of upcoming title Bulletstorm will have a voucher for the multiplayer stage, Epic's Mike Capps talked about the actual beta and when it is available.
"We've been saying spring," Capps said of the beta's launch date. "My guess is it will be sometime around April or so. It's going to be early enough so it really impacts Gears [of War 3's] development, but we want to make sure everyone has the chance to play Bulletstorm before they jump right into the beta."
"I think everybody knows we had some multiplayer stability issues with Gears 2 multiplayer out of the box," he added. "While we fixed those later, the opportunity to be really, really sure that our new dedicated server infrastructure is going to be operational on day one with Gears 3 was totally worth the time to make the beta."
The multiplayer mode of the original Gears of War made the franchise a hit with Xbox 360 owners, but the second game didn't exactly reach that same level of success due to poor matchmaking, host advantage and many other issues.
With the future multiplayer beta, it seems that Epic is eager to atone for its sins and deliver a great experience for online gamers.
Gears of War 3 is set to arrive next fall, exclusively for the Xbox 360.