The good news is gamers who were approved to play the Skyrim Dawnguard beta for the Xbox 360 will be able to play it today. The bad news is Bethesda announced that only 1/2 a percent of applicants were given the key to do so.
Shockingly, Bethesda‘s official blog states that an “overwhelming number of fans” applied for the chance to play as a demon vampire that sucks the life out of everyone and turns into hundreds of bats. Yesterday they should have comple
ted deployment of the of Xbox Live redemption codes through applicants’ emails along with details on accessing their private feedback forums.
For those that got rejected, however, there is yet reason to hold on to hope:
Bethesda’s surprise gift of public sign-ups for Skyrim‘s Dawnguard beta on Xbox Live won’t be the last such offering, production director Ashley Cheng told G4 in a brief chat at E3 2012. “Any future DLC we do have, there’s going to be a private beta,” he said, nodding to the lessons learned from the rocky PlayStation 3 Skyrim release and the subsequent request for fans to send in their save files.No word yet though on a DLC release for the PS3 or PC. Apparently it was easy to release a beta for Microsoft because it has a “preexisting framework for download codes,” from what I understand, allows Bethesda to send out codes earlier. Anyway here is G4’s explanation:
The Xbox 360 console turned out to be the perfect platform for this plan, thanks to Microsoft’s pre-existing framework for download codes. In this case, the codes are just being activated early and Bethesda will give them out to those accepted into the beta. Those people will then also be granted access to a private forum where they’ll be able to give feedback on any glaring balance issues or bugs. Patches can then be authored and pushed live while the beta is still in progress. we’ll basically fix anything we have to and then it goes live.Meanwhile, here’s what we’re all missing and what those .005% of people are playing today:
