Bleeding Edge Tears into 2020 with Closed Beta Beginning on February 14
What a year it’s been for Bleeding Edge. Before our reveal during the Xbox E3 2019 Briefing, no one outside our studio knew our fast and frenetic 4v4 team brawler even existed! It’s been an absolute whirlwind of a ride for the team at Ninja Theory. Whilst we can’t wait to kick off our closed beta on February 14, 2020, let’s look back at how we got here.
The E3 Announcement
At the Xbox E3 2019 Briefing, we were thrilled to reveal our first look at Bleeding Edge to everyone at the show and those watching at home around the world. E3 was also our chance to showcase our Creative Director Rahni Tucker. Rahni had previously worked on DmC: Devil May Cry at Ninja Theory, bringing her love of multiplayer games and action combat together to create Bleeding Edge.
Throughout the rest of E3, the team showcased Bleeding Edge to a massive crowd of attendees at our booth with the first playable hands-on. We wanted to extend a massive thank you to everyone who stopped by to play and chat with us. We had an amazing time and there were some truly close matches that had us laughing and shouting along with you. We even took home a few E3 awards, including a Best of E3!
Technical Alpha
At E3, we also opened sign-ups to our technical alpha, and we were thrilled that so many of you signed up on BleedingEdge.com for a chance to play! After the team had recovered from E3 (and a healthy dose of jetlag), we had just a couple of weeks to get everything ready for you all to play Bleeding Edge from the comfort of your own homes.
What took us by surprise was how quickly some of you jumped to the cause of creating your own Bleeding Edge online communities. A Discord server was set up by a truly fantastic few of our technical alpha players, which rapidly became an active and friendly home for our community.
Over the following months, we ran weekly alpha play tests, eagerly watching and waiting to see how you’d play. Would you all pick Daemon the most, sneaking up on unsuspecting healers? Would you re-invent the meta, discovering a host of tricks and team compositions that even we didn’t think of? Would the train of pain on the Jersey Sink map get more kills than any single player throughout the entire alpha?
Our questions and curiosities were answered as we sent surveys, gathered feedback, chatted with you, balanced, polished, tweaked, optimised… and we have our alpha community to thank for it. Our final technical alpha test was on December 12, 2019. A sincere and heartfelt thank you to everyone in the technical alpha for supporting us!
The X019 Trailer, New Fighter, and Release Date Reveal
By the time we got back from our trip to gamescom to share Bleeding Edge with our fans in Germany, it was already time to share more! At X019, not only did we unveil a new trailer, we also revealed a brand-new character Cass, announced our release date, Closed Betas and pre-order goodies!
The trailer gave our fans a closer look into the world and characters of Bleeding Edge. Before tearing it up together in the arena, our augmented anti-heroes weren’t always fighting fit.
Agile, deadly, and cassowary-inspired Cass (see what we did there?) was received by you all with much surprise and excitement – the Bleeding Edge fighters are quite the diverse and motley crew. We loved seeing your reactions to Cass, who was playable for the first time at X019.
Our biggest announcement at X019 was that Bleeding Edge will launch March 24, 2020 on Xbox One, Windows 10, and Steam. You can pre-order Bleeding Edge now on any of those platforms to receive access to our Closed Beta in 2020, and the bonus Punk Pack of cosmetic in-game items. If you’re a member of Xbox Game Pass you will automatically get access to our closed beta, and to receive the Punk Pack you’ll need to play Bleeding Edge by March 31, 2020.
The Road to Launch
This brings us up to the present day, where the team is gearing up for our first closed beta on February 14, 2020. Grab your team and join us in making the Bleeding Edge beta and launch especially awesome! Join our communities on the BleedingEdge.com forums and the Discord to chat with fellow fighters, and follow us on social media to stay up to date with all the latest and greatest from the dev team.
Get ready! 2020 is going to be a blast!