Well, the Tom Clancy’s Division Beta has come and gone, and after the dust has settled, we are left to evaluate just how successful it was. This is a Beta for a game that is just weeks from launch, so we can be reasonably confident that this is The Division that we will be playing on March 8th.
Today, Ubisoft announced the stats for the Beta, and they reveal two interesting facts:
It was the biggest Beta ever for a new IP
- More than 6.4 million players apparently participated in The Division Beta, making it the biggest beta ever for a new IP – on current generation platforms. That bodes well for The Division, as it launches for PS4, and Xbox One and Windows PC on March 8th. Ubisoft is probably very happy with the results they saw in the Beta.
The average player spent nearly 5 hours playing it
- Ubisoft says that on average, players spent 4 hours and 52 minutes as an activated sleeper agent, journeying through The Division’s pandemic-stricken New York City. More than one third of that time was spent in The Division’s player-versus-player (PVP) environment, the Dark Zone, with more than 2.5 million players going rogue. That is a pretty long average time – remember the “average” part means there were lots of players who played for much longer than that. Not bad for a Beta.
That amount of play-time is also impressive when you remember that The Division’s environment is pretty bleak. Pretty real, yes, but not exactly a “fun” place to spend a lot of time, visually. The fact that so many players were quite content to stay in that grey, harsh world for that many hours shows that the game is, at its basis, pretty damn fun. I am sure that Ubisoft was watching closely to see just how receptive players would be to the game’s world – and the Beta showed that they are very receptive to it.
What are the take-aways? Well, with so many people playing the Beta, we can safely say that The Division still has a lot of momentum ahead of its release in March. The 6.4 million players who took part clearly prove that there is a lot of pent-up interest in The Division, and that should make Ubisoft very excited about the game’s sales upon release. Will the momentum keep up? There is no reason to doubt that it will.
So, with that record breaking participation and engagement, Ubisoft is now looking ahead to The Division’s official release next month. They were understandably excited about The Division’s prospects after the Beta.
“We want to thank the millions of people who joined in on The Division’s Open Beta,” said, Magnus Jansen, creative director. “We hope everybody enjoyed playing, and we think the beta is going to help ensure a great launch for the game. We’re looking forward to everyone getting their hands on the full game when The Division is released on March 8th.”
In the gaming industry, we see lots of games get hyped, get released, and fall far short of expectations – The Order: 1886 anyone? But the Beta for The Division shows that, in this one case at least, all the hype is real, and we have a genuine blockbuster new IP on our hands.
See you on March 8th!
SOURCE: Press Release