SOCOM 4 Public Beta

[[mXm] kotaco]

Well today marks the day that the Beta for the upcoming game SOCOM 4 goes online for all via Playstation Store. For those of you who got overly excited, like I did, you have no doubt by now figured out that the post saying it would be available April 5th wasn't exactly what we had imagined. The beta didn't actually go up for public download until some time between 4 and 7pm EST. While this may seem like less of an issue to our friends in California, us here on the east coast had to wait all day just to start downloading! Yes they don't normally update til that time, but the point is I expected to be playing April 5th, but at this point that seems like wishful thinking.

But don't let me ranting stop you from enjoying the beta now that all of us who aren't special invitees, or Killzone splurgers, or Playstation Plus members are able to join in on the bug filled fun. Of course you'll have to sit through about 437 MB of downloading first before you are even able to load it up. That's actually not too bad, although I sure do miss the days they sent out discs with the beta on them cutting out the download process altogether.

But wait! Before you go getting to excited, there is a hidden downside so to speak. After the 437 MB download for the initial beta, you'll have to load and and once again update to the beta since Zipper has added a few fixes over the past couple weeks. What is the update size you may ask? Well thanks to our friend from up North, I can tell you just that. A whopping 1,561 MB (or 1.524 Gigs) that you'll need to go through before you can start playing the actual game.

So for those of us with the lower than average internet connections, and those like me who were only able to start the download recently; it look's as if we won't be playing the beta until April 6th. Thanks for the kick in the nuts Sony! I guess it was too much wishful thinking on my part to assume that you'd update the PSN store around midnight or early in the morning. That would just make sense.

The overall point of this rant? SOCOM 4 Beta is now own PSN store to download for all. It is comprised of two downloads, on of which is fairly large. If you planned on downloading and playing tonight, at least for us east coasters, don't get your hopes up.

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