Rage Open Beta Doubtful, Demo Possible

Rage, id Software's upcoming celebration of all things heavily armed and meticulously rendered, will most likely not see an open beta test, according to id CEO Todd Hollenshead.

"I doubt there will be an open beta," Hollenshead told VG247.

When asked whether the game would offer some sort of demo, however, Hollenshead was a bit more generous. "The demo question is hard to answer, because I don't know what the development cycle will be like. We don't have anything against demos or tests; we typically do that - probably - to a greater extent than almost anybody else in the industry, so my guess would be that we will have something, but that's far from set in stone. There could be something that's more along the lines of a PC demo or maybe a Mac demo that comes out from a test perspective. But really, at this point, that's speculation."

Notice Hollenshead specifically said "there could be something"? That "something" is key here.

My guess? Your local GameStop will have an entire wall of Rage shareware on 3.5" floppies a few months before the game's release date next year.

That sorta thing seemed to work okay for Doom.