- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
The fans are the people the game is being made for. You know all that secrecy and censorship that keeps us from any information about Halo 2? Giving people the game would ruin that. Bungie wants to blow the fans away, so you'll all just have to wait until the game is released.
If you want to keep everything secret, why show the game off at E3 to hundreds of journalists, whose reports would naturally be read by many people? What exactly are you hidding? There won't be a beta, obviously - requires a dev. xbox (for legal use), and many other things that contribute to the cost, with no real payback for Bungie/Microsoft. They could spend millions on all the dev xboxes needed, but what's the point?
What really pisses me off is when some guy named "Sinbad" and his kids get to go on Halo 2, before millions of others, because he's famous. Regardless of whether he's a Halo fan or not, it's just because he's famous, not because he's a true Halo fan, which is a deep shame.
Additionally, why deny others a demo when all the code is there? If you're concerned about it not being a finished product, wanting to keep it a secret, or for some other reason, remember one thing: People have already seen the unfinished product, made many previews of it, which have each been seen by many people, respectively.
We don't want much in a demo. We're not asking for Bungie to include 1/2 the SPC, and all finished multiplayer levels, but just one SPC and one MP level, which have already been seen by many people. What secret is there? Ok we might know the exact location of a few fusion cells on Zanzibar in MP, and get a little taste for the new AI ourselves, but nothing out-of-this-world. Keeps the fans happy until Nov 9th, game magazines get to rave on about Halo 2 even more (all publicity is good publicity after all), and hopefully less crap on these boards, which could be answered if the author put in some effort.
It's a shame that you allow famous people and journalists (expecially those from gamespy) to play the game, ahead of your 'beloved' fan base, at the expense of your true fans.
Summery: Beta, No. Demo, Yes.