Until June 30th, you have a chance to play EA’s upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront before it’s released. DICE has opened its doors to applicants willing to help test the alpha version of the game.
The alpha is only open to play on PC through the use of EA’s distribution system, Origin. Along with this announcement, Polygon concisely listed the minimum system requirements to play the alpha. Note these specs are specifically for the alpha, not the finished product. Take a look.
CPU: Quad Core CPU e.g. Intel Core i5-2300 @ 2.8 GHz or AMD Phenom II x4 955 @ 3.2 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz
RAM: 6 GB
OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8/8.1 (64-bit operating system required)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 or AMD Radeon HD 7970 with 2 GB of Video Memory
These specs were part of an email received and shared by Polygon, which included a few more relevant details. For the most part, it was about the very limited amount of applicants that will get to play the alpha.
…space in the Closed Alpha is very limited and we may not be able to accept all players who apply.
But they also mention their intentions:
The purpose of the Star Wars Battlefront Closed Alpha is to perform a number of technical tests that will help the team at DICE as they continue the development of the game.
And they don’t forget to mention that the alpha “does not represent final quality of the game…Performance at this stage of development may be inconsistent, with possible issues such as server lag and downtime.”
None of this is out of character for a closed alpha of any game, so this is all just par for the course. Oftentimes, an alpha will continue into a beta stage and open to all applicants, but titles that go this route have less publicity and smaller budgets. Another option is for the PC version of a launched game to include a public test server for future content, but that implies a launched game, obviously.
The game will be available for pre-loading by accepted applicants on July 1st and playable the following day, according to Eurogamer.
Whether or not this leads to more widespread testing inclusion and more chances for more people to play is too far in the future to ascertain at this point. So if you want a chance to get in, apply before the deadline set for 12:59am UK time on June 30th (6:59pm on the east coast in the States).