Xbox One Call of Duty Black Ops 3 Beta Details Revealed

With the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 release date quickly approaching, video game publisher Activision is talking more about its plans to get the game’s multiplayer in the hands of players for testing purposes. This week Activision and developer Treyarch finally revealed the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 Beta release date for gamers on the Xbox One and Windows PCs.

Activision announced the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta details later yesterday on its blog. The good news is that the beta is coming to all platforms during the month of August. For Xbox One and Windows PC users, the wait until the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta will an excruciating one.

August 19th marks the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta release on Sony’s PS4 gaming console. At E3 2015 Sony declared that its PlayStation consoles were the new home of the Call of Duty franchise. Getting the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 Beta release before other consoles goes hand in hand with that. On August 23rd the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta on PS4 ends.

Read: Black Ops 3 Beta: 10 Important Details

On August 26th the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta begins for Xbox One and PC users. This beta will conclude on August 30th. In total, gamers on both consoles only get to spend roughly four days trying out the game’s multiplayer modes before it is gone. Users won’t have the chance to play again until the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 release date on November 6th.

As for the contents of the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta, Activision is being less coy about that as well. The publisher says that during the beta gamers will get to experience the new movement system and Specialist upgrades for themselves. The blog post also notes “multiplayer maps” will be available, so we at least know that there’ll be multiple settings for it. Specialists are the characters that players customize. Call of Duty Black Ops 3’s multiplayer modes are based around different Specialists with their own abilities and back story. That’s opposed to the nameless, story-less characters that usually dominate first-person shooters in multiplayer.

Call of Duty Black Ops 3 features four-player co-operative play in its campaign and deep character customization thanks to different earnable power-ups. Treyarch is hoping that the new movement system will make playing as a enhanced soldier more fluid.

Some anticipated bad Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta news for owners of older consoles. Activision hasn’t disappointed in that regard. Today’s post doesn’t make a single mention of a looming beta experience for those on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3. It explicitly mentions just Call of Duty Black Ops 3 on PS4, Call of Duty Black Ops 3 on Xbox One and Call of Duty Black Ops 3 on PC.

Read: Call of Duty Black Ops 3 Release: Which Edition to Buy?

To get into the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta users have to place a pre-order for the final version of the game. Retailers — like GameStop — print codes to get into the beta on their receipts. Users then need to go to here to redeem their code. To be clear, you don’t have to purchase a physical copy of the game to get into the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta. Today’s post indicates that Steam, the PlayStation Store and Microsoft’s Xbox Store all provide users with beta codes when they pre-order digital copies too. To be clear, you’re still better off pre-ordering from a store. If you don’t like the game after playing the Call of Duty Black Ops 3 beta you can easily cancel a physical game. Microsoft and Sony don’t allow returns for digital game pre-orders.