'Halo 5: Guardians' Beta Gameplay Saw More Than 20 Million Matches Played

The beta for “Halo 5: Guardians’ launched in early December, and in just over two months more than twenty million matches have been played. That’s almost 290 years of worth of gameplay logged and more than 181 million kills confirmed, Kirkland, Washington-based developer 343 Industries said Thursday.

“This was a huge endeavor for everyone on the ‘Halo 5’ team and one that we approached with nervous excitement,” said Josh Holmes, executive producer on the “Halo 5” beta. 343i said that it listened closely to player feedback on social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, forums and its newly launched Halo Community Feedback Program.

“From these sources we tracked literally thousands of pieces of detailed feedback,” said Holmes. “The team has spent the past few weeks poring over player feedback from the aforementioned sources and from this we have developed an extensive list of improvements for the game, including adjustments to Spartan Abilities, Weapons, Competitive Skill Ranking and much more.”

Holmes also said that developers were surprised by the amount of passion players poured into their gameplay feedback. “The level of engagement and response from our community shattered all of our expectations,” he said.

The Halo Community Feedback Program allows the developers to engage with the “most passionate and experienced members of our fan base,” said Holmes. More than 19,000 people have signed up for the program. The average player has clocked more than 900 hours playing the game, which is the equivalent of more than 37 days of playtime per person.