‘Titanfall 2’ Beta Will Be PS4 And Xbox One Only, PC Left Out Due To Leaks And Hardware

Respawn Entertainment plans to have a Titanfall 2 multiplayer beta test prior to the hybrid mech and man shooter hitting the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. However, the developer announced Monday the two consoles will be getting the beta while PC gamers will not due to the variety of hardware and the propensity for leaks from dataminers.

A date for the Titanfall 2 multiplayer beta has not been set yet, but Respawn Entertainment Founder and CEO Vince Zampella wanted to let fans know which platforms to expect to test the game on. He revealed the following reasons why the shooter will not be publicly tested on the PC.

“Two big issues from a development standpoint: hardware variety & ‘min spec’ optimization,” Zampella explained. “We’re still making a lot of tweaks and changes to the renderer, the game, and effects so we haven’t run the game through the hardware compatibility lab yet to detect and handle a large variety of hardware – video cards, CPUs etc. Quite frankly, we aren’t ready to deal with that yet, we are still making the game better. We also haven’t done enough work to fully support our ‘Min Spec’ on PC yet. So, currently the PC game isn’t as easy to throw out for testing as the console is, because of the additional variables and configurations that we need to support.”

There are indeed thousands of combinations of PC hardware and software to consider, and the game currently does not list system requirements on the Origin Store. Another strong consideration is the effect dataminers have on a release.

“Also, because the single player story has some wonderful secrets that we really want to preserve for launch, we also have to worry about leaks. Our wonderfully curious PC players have proven in the past that they will dig out anything they can, and there’s a risk that they could spoil some of our single player,” the CEO added.

This has already happened to Battlefield 1 another Electronic Arts-published title due this fall. An alpha test of the game was recently datamined and revealed details about the multiplayer and the single-player campaign that were not previously announced. This included the number of missions, characters, lines of dialogue, and much more.

The Titanfall 2 campaign has been a relatively closely held secret for Respawn Entertainment. The basics of what the developer has revealed through trailers and previews so far is a Militia soldier named Jack Cooper is forced to pair with Titan in the midst of a battle to become an unlikely pilot. The pair must survive the hostile wildlife on an alien world along with enemies from the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMF).

The campaign is linear but will feature open areas for players to explore and have multiple avenues to complete objectives. Players will be able to utilize stealth, parkour, and other abilities to complete a mission or go in guns blazing. Players will also be able to communicate with the Titan, BT-7274 and use different conversation paths. This will not affect the game’s outcome, however.

On the multiplayer side, Titanfall 2 will make use of Multiplay Game Services to provide dedicated server hosting for online matches. The service integrates with Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s Web Service along with Google’s Compute Platform. Combined with “bare metal” servers, the idea is to provide worldwide coverage for players to experience the mix of multiplayer matches with AI-controlled NPCs during battles.

Titanfall 2 is due out October 28 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via EA’s Origin Store.

What do you think of the decision to forego a PC beta test for Titanfall 2? Sound off in the comments below.

[Image via Respawn Entertainment]