Hey Ranters, are you interested in playing Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood’s online multiplayer before everyone else? As we mentioned before, starting on September 13th a beta will become available for all players to test out the new mode. What’s that? Scratch the 'all' part, players who own a PS3 will be the only ones who will be able to try out the multiplayer. Wait what? Sorry again, players who have a PS3 and who have preordered the game from GameStop will be the only ones able to participate in an open beta of the game’s multiplayer experience. I’m glad we cleared that up.

Any gamer who pre-orders the game from GameStop will receive a token on a first come first serve basis, that will allow them access to the multiplayer beta starting on September 13th, but only on the PS3. For those who have already pre-ordered the game all you have to do is dig through your wallet for that receipt and present it to a Gamestop employee starting on August 9th.

Two things worry me about this decision. The first is that we are slowly moving towards exclusives that are not only going to impact consumer behaviors but that are going to further fuel the cutthroat nature of game vendors. Instead of getting a new piece of armor for purchasing at Best Buy over GameStop, we might have to look forward to items that will force some people to purchase the game twice in attempt to reap all the goodies.

My second worry is Ubisoft’s restrictive nature for the beta. It limits so many players who might not be sold on the idea of multiplayer from being able to come around. Had they simply kept it to a GameStop exclusive, it might have gone over a little better in my mind.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood with nonrestrictive multiplayer releases on November 16th on 360 and PS3.

Source: Gamespot and VG247