Titanfall beta had 2 million players

Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall beta last week started with a limited number of players who were lucky enough to get in. On Saturday night, Feb. 15, Respawn opened the beta to all players on Xbox One and later all PC players as well.

By the time the Titanfall beta ended on Feb. 19, around 2 million people played the game, Respawn’s community manager Abbie Heppe told Polygon.

Though it had a clear promotional benefit, Respawn engineer Jon Shiring said that the Titanfall beta was also an important test for Xbox Live compute, Microsoft’s cloud computing technology. “Forza used it a little bit, but they weren't as reliant on it as we are,” he told Polygon. “The game is completely reliant on it. If it's down, nobody can play."

Shiring said that while Respawn may still find more problems at launch, the beta helped them find 10 “real things” that they worked on and fixed.

One result of the beta that Respawn probably didn’t plan for is that it would lead to a leak about Titanfall. By looking into the beta files, savvy data miners managed to unearth the names of 14 potential maps that could feature in the full game.

For more on Titanfall, check out GameSpot’s new The Next Big Game feature, which has five days of coverage on the most anticipated games of the year.