At this stage, I think January would be the earliest beta would end. But I would be surprised if it ran past, say, March. So basically sometime in first quarter of next year we hope to hit 1.0. And immediately after that we're going to keep working on it, anyway, so it is slightly a formality assuming that the game takes off before that point (which, signs are pointing that it might).
The goal for 1.0 is to have a solid, large, "complete" experience where someone can play that and never update and say that was a good game. The reality, of course, is that like AI War this is a game I want to remain active and growing for years to come. One thing that 1.0 of this will signal is the development of another expansion for AI War, most likely. At that point we'll have two mature games and can split time doing free DLC for AVWW while doing the usual free DLC / paid content mix for an AI War expansion. Then most likely we'll switch back and do a major expansion for AVWW while still doing even more free DLC, etc.
All of that, of course, is assuming that we're making enough to pay the bills and keep the lights on during that time. But that's the plan at this point, and like I said things are looking really good. I just wouldn't feel good about rushing to 1.0 at November or December, just to hit the holiday market on Steam or whatever, because that's really just not as much time as we want to be able to cram all the content that we want in here for 1.0.
