It appeared as if Microsoft’s launch of the Halo 3 beta was prepared to go off without a hitch yesterday morning. The public relations machine was in high gear, forums were buzzing, and Crackdown buyers were standing by. Then the official opening time of 8 a.m. EST rolled around, and nothing happened.
Perplexed users dug around online, only to find that the launch had been delayed by technical issues. Hours continued to tick on by, and outrage built, until 7 p.m. when a fix finally came down the pike from Microsoft. Of course, by that time, anyone who had taken work or school off for the launch had squandered a day.
As an apology to users, Microsoft and Bungie extended the length of the beta four days, to end on June 6 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. “We apologize for the delay and hardships this issue has caused and hope that it quickly becomes a distant memory clouded by good times playing Halo 3 with your friends,” a Bungie employee wrote on the company’s news page.
The moral of the story: Don’t make fans jump through hoops (and whip out their credit cards) to access a beta, pump them up with an official start time, and then keep them waiting. Delays and technical problems are par for the course when it comes to beta tests, but users expect something else when they’ve gone through all of the above. It looks like Halo 3 developers may have caused a minor public image setback by relying on such a flaky mechanism to build hype for the game.
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