Seriously, like they are going to fix all the serious bugs in two weeks, this is very weird and dissapointing,  what is going on.

Edited July 13, 20205 yr by OHN767

Why bother with beta testing when your customers will blindly "preorder" the product anyway? Much easier to let your customers do the beta testing after release.

I think that they are at the end of their development budget, no other reason to accelerate this new "beta". Also, I have some doubts regarding the future support and improvements.

People will complain on launch day. Unfortunately, they don't exactly face a lot of competition in terms of bug free sim when looking at the competition right now. So people will complain but have nowhere else to go.

12 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

Why bother with beta testing when your customers will blindly "preorder" the product anyway? Much easier to let your customers do the beta testing after release.

Like Xplane vulkan 😄 I joke.....

Public alpha testers does not mean that those are the only that test. It's very possible that MS has a large internal testing department that works with different builds. It's possible that the Alpha testers are "targeted" for machine compatibility, base code compatibility, etc. and are not working with the same builds as the internal testers.

17 minutes ago, dfanucci said:

Public alpha testers does not mean that those are the only that test. It's very possible that MS has a large internal testing department that works with different builds. It's possible that the Alpha testers are "targeted" for machine compatibility, base code compatibility, etc. and are not working with the same builds as the internal testers.

💯 this. Who knows the exact motivation for the alpha. A combo of hardware + features they couldn't test in house + a bit more randomization to the testing. Of course on top of that community engagement, marketing, and  so on. I'm sure they have rigorous in house testing as well. This isn't their first rodeo. 

Those who will be buying this right now will be the real beta testers for the following six months. That’s for sure.

Cheers, Ef

Edited July 13, 20205 yr by edpatino

44 minutes ago, Xtremekh said:

💯 this. Who knows the exact motivation for the alpha. A combo of hardware + features they couldn't test in house + a bit more randomization to the testing. Of course on top of that community engagement, marketing, and  so on. I'm sure they have rigorous in house testing as well. This isn't their first rodeo. 

I'm in the alpha and it was for hardware testing ie all the different hardware etc. If anyone thinks Asobo is releasing a half baked game then I have a few unicorns for sale. all these extra planes that will be available, we haven't seen or tested yet. I'm sure they were holding out just so the leakers wouldn't have the full game 

Edited July 13, 20205 yr by devgrp

Testers aren't happy but I suspect the alpha builds we got were to test server loads and for the team to gather info on different specs hence why they were so concerned about leaks. The beta will be interesting because it'll basically be the retail version minus some features.

Nevertheless it's exciting the sim is coming out so soon and what we've learned from FSX and P3D is these sims are complex and will have issues but over time they'll be resolved with hotfixes.

Edited July 13, 20205 yr by YVRDXBLHR

3 minutes ago, YVRDXBLHR said:

Testers aren't happy but I suspect the alpha builds we got were to test server loads and for the team to gather info on different specs hence why they were so concerned about leaks. The beta will be interesting because it'll basically be the retail version minus some features.

Nevertheless it's exciting the sim is coming out so soon and what we've learned from FSX and P3D is these sims are complex and will have issues but over time they'll be resolved with hotfixes.

That might be it, but why not say so, why leave the alpha testers in the dark.

18 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Those who will be buying this right now will be the real beta testers for the following six months. That’s for sure.

Cheers, Ef

I can only speak for myself, but I will buy it and I don't mind reporting bugs. Based on Prepar3d5, I've acquired some familiarity with this.😉

Kind regards, Michael

I’m guessing it’s more MS wanting it out rather then Asobo. 
Their last couple of updates seemed pretty rushed and lacking some detail. 
I feel a little sorry for them. 
 

Edited July 13, 20205 yr by Doug47

1 minute ago, OHN767 said:

That might be it, but why not say so, why leave the alpha testers in the dark.

The communication between testers and the development team has been lacking. It seems like the 3rd party developers had more direct access to the team and were more involved.

No doubt our testing brought changes to the final version but what those changes were is hard to know because there was never set parameters for testing which is why I believe from day one the alpha test was masked to collect user data. Even the people who didn't get access provided a lot of valuable data to the team to work from and for MS to get a very good idea what their customer base looks like.

With the amount of extra planes coming out you'd have to be silly to think the alphas represent all of the work that has been done. The alpha is just a snippet to let them know whether or not they're on the right track.