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Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 will launch this coming October, but you’ll have the chance to check it out more than a month before its launch when the open beta kicks off in August.
Well, if you have early access to the open beta that is. In a post on Twitter the official Call Of Duty account revealed the dates for the coming open beta, which will be available on all platforms at the same time. Something that has never happened before with a Call Of Duty game thanks to years of exclusivity deals dating all the way back to the 360/PS3-era.
The beta will kick off (for early access users) on August 30 and go until September 4, 2024. Then there will be a second weekend of a completely open beta, which will run from September 6-9th.
To be a part of the early access weekend, you need to have either pre-ordered the game or be an Xbox Game Pass subscriber.
It’s good to see that players on all platforms will be able to jump into the beta at the same time, but it is interesting to note how we got to this point.
Back when Xbox was the leading console in the 360-era, Activision took its business to Microsoft for these beta-exclusivity deals. Xbox players got the beta to themselves for a weekend, ahead of everyone else. PlayStation players had to wait.
Once the tables-turned though with the PS4, the beta exclusivity deals went to PlayStation. Now that Microsoft owns Activision, but is in no way the market leader between the major platforms, it’s cutting that exclusivity as if it’s the hero coming to end console wars.
Never mind that Microsoft helped kick off the practice in the first place. Neither side was right to have these deals – it’s a beta, and part of its purpose is to be a test ahead of launch, of course it should be on all platforms the whole time – but it’s still interesting to look back on the history of these betas and their exclusivity.
Source – [Activision]
