After a successful stress test this past week Activision announced it is opening up the second weekend of the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare beta to all PS4 users. The beta will be available as a download starting today so it can be downloaded before the weekend rolls around.
Opening up the beta to more users is important in stress testing. As anyone who tried out the beta in the first weekend can attest, availability certainly needed adjusting. Many gamers suffered significant downtime. Increasing users will help Activision balance out the server load and fine tune some of the details before launch.
Along with stress tests, getting more users to try out the game is a great marketing move. Allowing all PS4 users will try and garner some good will during a 4th quarter slammed with high profile FPS releases. Along with the recently released Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 coming up later this month, Activision wants to cement its fan-base while winning over some of the casual genre fans looking for game to dive into.
The first weekend beta featured a game that felt in way an amalgamation of the past few installments. Advanced Warfare, Black Ops 3 and even Ghosts traces can be seen in the DNA of Infinite Warfare. Call of Duty games have almost perfected its formula of FPS with minor tweaks and improvements yearly. The balance between ground and vertical combat felt better and more even than in Advanced Warfare. The class system returns and includes supers, like Black Ops 3, which still feel a bit odd; its like someone spilled a little bit of Destiny into my Call of Duty. Unfortunately, some users instead found matchmaking woes, long queues and drops from matches. Hopefully the second weekend has a much smoother time, so we can enjoy racking up kills and not frustrations.
The Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare beta can be downloaded from the PSN Store now. The open beta weekend starts on October 21st at 10am PDT and will extend until October 24th at 10am PDT.
