Avatar Reality will be bringing its high-end virtual world, Blue Mars, to beta in January 2009, reports Eurogamer. The beta will last for three months, and Avatar Reality expects a full launch in April 2009.
Blue Mars runs on CryEngine2, and from what I saw of the world at Virtual Worlds Expo in September, it certainly looked good. That requires relatively high-end hardware, but Avatar Reality has been betting that the necessary power will be making its way into even low-end computers by the time Blue Mars launches. Just from a quick survey of Dell and Best Buy's stores, it looks like that's largely true. Most users are still on slightly older systems, though. Hopefully Black Friday will bring a hardware refresh for a lot of those potential users, even in the economic downturn.
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