The definition of Alpha varies greatly across the industry. We take it to mean "code-and-content complete with no major bugs." This means everything that's going into the game is in the Alpha version, but it has yet to be rigorously scrubbed for glitches.
The Alpha stage is the time to get rid of all these bugs, while the Beta stage is the first submission candidate that is sent to the platform manufacturer -- Microsoft or Sony, for example. In Alpha, you're internally hunting for bugs. In Beta, you're dealing not only with bugs you've discovered yourself, but also the ones the platform manufacturers may call out. Our definition of Alpha is most companies' definition of Beta -- that is, LucasArts builds in the extra time between Alpha and Beta to refine the game, whereas most companies only spend the ttime between Beta and a final submission for manufacturing -- which is really only a few weeks in most schedules -- for polish. Two or three weeks is not enough time, especially if much of that time is spent knocking out bugs.
At this point, the team does start to scale down in size. There's still the Beta submission period where we need engineers on call in case any surprise bugs are discovered, and there's a stretch of PR and Marketing activity that requires core team members to stay aboard. But that's very much at the tail end of post-production -- the period in filmmaking where there's special screenings, trailers, ads and junkets, just before the curtain rises on the finished product.
For more information about Star Wars The Force Unleashed, visit the official site here.
