I can see both sides. A lot of gamers don't have the cash to be paying full price for a pre-order just to play beta. I was at that point in my life as well when going through college. Now that I'm older it's a different story I suppose. I've been looking forward to the game for a long time so I'm eager to see how polished/unpolished the beta is at this point and hopefully get a few cents worth of my opinions through to the developers.
Playing devil's advocate, I can see where it makes sense to make the beta available first to those who pay up front. For one it protects them from all those premature betanators who like to join free betas, try it for 5 minutes, then declare they'll "never buy this buggy crap", even though that is by definition what a beta is. They've got your money now, so ooops too bad! Also prevents those types from immediately going out on the forums/blogs etc and declaring what a crappy game said beta is, hurting sales further. Games should always be judged on the released product, not the beta, no matter how bad it is.
It also makes sure that the most hardcore fans of the series/genre will be playing the beta first, so that they get useful and valid input from their core audience. Also, it allows them to judge interest in the game using pre-order numbers to better plan marketing before release.
That being said, I have pre-ordered games in the past that totally sucked so it's always a shot in the dark. I don't worry about it much, since most games give hours of enjoyment (100s of hours if it's a good fps) for the price of dinner and a movie. Can't beat that imo!
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