Black & White Reaches Alpha

The game that was originally supposed to be out by the end of this year and one of my most looked-forward to games, Black & White, has achieved the status "Alpha" (which is right before "Beta" where the game is nearly complete and mostly balance and bugs are worked on, and then when done, "Gold"). Thanks to Gamespy for the newsbit, who in turn was sent the news from Lionhead Studios' Jamie Durrant. Here's what Jamie had to say:

Today we were officially told by EA that Black & White had achieved Alpha status. This now means that the final steps towards releasing the game have now started. We now have till the end of January to fix any bugs that EA test department have found and might find, tweak the gameplay and generally give the game a good polish before it goes into full production.

It certainly is a moment that we're proud of and a great start to our Xmas holidays.

Thanks again, to all involved in helping create and test Black & White, and to all the fans out there who have given us great support over the past 3 years.