GC 08' StarCraft 2 IGN Progress Report

ign.com - August 20, 2008

GC 2008 in Leipzig is about to get underway starting tomorrow but IGN has already managed an early insight into the current developments for StarCraft 2. Frank Pierce, Senior Vice President of Production Development, was on hand to give them some details regarding the games' current development state and the chance of seeing a public beta anytime soon.

Currently the testing for StarCraft II doesn't include that many people. "It's like a limited internal alpha phase," says Pearce. "The development team that's working on it is playing it and we've released some alpha builds to some other development teams internally and then the quality assurance department is also playing it."

Pierce goes on to answer the pressing question everyone has been curious about -- when will we see beta.

"That's months away," said Pearce. "We still have to expand our internal alpha to include the rest of the organization, iterate on that feedback, and then we have to evaluate what kind of beta we need, whether we need one at all. There's a pretty high level of certainty that we're going to need a beta and then we have to decide if we want to host beta or a closed beta or both. So, months."

So there you have it folks. The game is still in a closed internal alpha state and with confirmation from Pierce, it's safe to say we won't see a beta till early next year at best.