The short version? 343 was blown away by the response to the beta, which saw around 1 million gamers play 20 million matches over its duration. It was a big, nerve-wracking experiment, but one that 343 executive producer Josh Holmes says paid off. The beta arrived about a year in front of the game's scheduled release date this fall, making it the earliest Microsoft had ever launched a beta for a Halo game. Skip to the bottom of this post to see all the Halo 5 beta stats and tweaks.ģ43 Industries on Thursday released a mountain of stats and other details about the Halo 5: Guardians beta, which ran for three weeks at the end of December and into the New Year.