This weekend is the first time Switch players will get to try out Arms officially. Nintendo has provided an image with all the dates and times you will be able to try the game. And they had previously announced that all 10 fighters will be available to play as well!
Our Take
This is certainly not the ideal way to beta test a game in our opinion, but we’re sure Nintendo has good reasoning and we’re happy they are giving players a chance to try the game out ahead of time and presumably, assist with it launching successfully. We’ll have more Arms coverage as E3 draws near so stay tuned!
They’re using it more as a server stress test by getting as many people as possible on the servers at one time. They did the same thing with Splatoon. They don’t think of it as beta testing at all and never have seemed to. Otherwise, I feel they’d leave it open for the entire weekend like most beta testing does nowadays.
Fair point Jesse. We certainly want to see it launch well and have had fun with what we’ve played.