GoW 4 multiplayer beta coming 18 April

Microsoft has announced the Gears of War multiplayer beta will come on 18 April.

Gamers who’ve played Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on XBO or Windows 10 will receive tokens for early access to the beta. Early access finishes on 24 April, at which point Xbox LIVE Gold members on XBO will also be invited to join. The beta finishes on 1 May.

To qualify for early access to the Gears of War 4 Multiplayer Beta on Xbox One log in to Xbox Live and play Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on Xbox One or Windows 10 by 0600hrs GMT, 11 April.

Tokens for the beta will be distributed in waves through the Xbox Live messaging system and begin arriving Monday 18 April.

In other Gears news, and relevant to this, this beta for the multiplayer will be developed by UK-based Splash Damage.

Speaking to Game Informer, Collation head Rod Fergusson said why Splash Damage were involved, and how the multiplayer is now just as important last he campaign.

"Historically, the campaign is the hardest thing to make out of any of these games," explained Fergusson. "So if you look at the development of Gears one, it was probably 90 percent single player, 10 percent multiplayer. Over the course of the franchise, that percentage shifted, but I don't think it ever got above 70/30. Coming here, multiplayer has a much greater position at the table. On day one, as we were prototyping our first campaign experience, we were also building multiplayer maps.

"We really want to meet the needs of not just recreational players but eSports players, and it's something we've been thinking about for the entire development cycle."

But Fergusson is convinced Splash Damage will do a good job on multiplayer.

“They also have a lot of expertise with online systems, in terms of matchmaking from Ultimate Edition. They basically had to rewrite for Xbox One, between us and them, the whole matchmaking sub-system... when you get a strategic partner like Splash Damage, we talk about training up our own team on Gears, but when you have another team that's trained up on Gears, we definitely want to work with them as much as possible."

To check it out make sure you follow the instructions on how to access the beta above, and then enjoy five of the campaign’s characters; JD, Kait, Del, Reyna and Oscar.