Sony may have scooped up the Call of Duty co-marketing deal after Microsoft decided not to renew it, but this doesn’t mean Xbox and PC players won’t get a chance to try the game before it comes out.
We’ve known that the upcoming beta test for Call of Duty: Black Ops III hits the PlayStation 4 on August 19, and now publisher Activision has confirmed that both the Xbox One and PC are also getting it. A week after Sony’s system gets the test, this beta goes live on Xbox One and PC on August 26.
Activision and Black Ops III developer Treyarch have promised to share more details in the near future about what the beta entails. But the studio has said that anyone who preorders the game on PS4, Xbox One, or PC (from certain retailers like GameStop) gets access to the test.
You can find out more and redeem your code by going to hte Call of Duty beta site.
This is the first time since World At War, way back in 2008 (we were all just babies!), that Activision is holding a beta for one of its Treyarch-developed Call of Duty games. While this is ostensibly a test to see how the game runs online, it’s also an obvious marketing opportunity. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 started this trend with a hugely popular beta test that ran after the game caught the media’s attention at the Electronic Entertainment Expo that year.
That beta eventually led to Modern Warfare kicking off an era of Call of Duty where it is the best-selling game annually (except for in 2013 when Grand Theft Auto V took that title).