: Public betas are more for marketing and building excitement than they are for
: testing the game. Sure, there's an added bonus of squashing bugs that they
: wouldn't have noticed otherwise or making small gameplay changes, but it
: doesn't go much further than that. The differences between the Halo 3 and
: Reach Beta and final build are pretty minimal. So even if Halo 4 did have
: a public beta, it wouldn't change much (except maybe the need for small
: updates).

Well firstly, a lot of people (including myself) don't like having to wait for these small updates. Secondly, I seem to remember Bungie saying during the Reach beta there were things they could change during the beta that couldn't be changed or couldn't easily or practically be changed after release.