The Division’s closed beta hands-on: Ubisoft’s blockbuster is overhyped but playable

It was inevitable that Tom Clancy’s The Division from Ubisoft came down to Earth. The game has been hyped ever since Ubisoft unveiled the game at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2013. Now that Ubisoft has let the press and gamers play its closed beta test, I’ve had a good first look at the gameplay.

And it feels like the ambitions have been scaled back, which is a disappointment because The Division is the biggest high-end game slated for launch so far this year. With its vast simulated open world powered by a proprietary game technology, The Division was supposed to represent the very best of what a team of hundreds of developers working for five years can do. And it will set the tone for major video game releases in the $26 billion console game industry.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.