We reached out to developer Uber to ask about selling an early access game at retail. Jan Mavor, one of the directors for the game wrote in an e-mail to Game Informer, "At Uber we've been trying really hard to innovate on business models during the entire development of [Planetary Annihilation]." Mavor continued by writing, "We had planned to do a retail release all along and the early access box came about as part of our experimental attitude. Since early access works so well, our partners at Nordic thought that it would be worth trying an early access retail edition and we agreed it was a cool idea."
When asked why release an unfinished game at retail Mavor replied, "The real question is, why not? After all, they are getting the same game, just earlier. It's a changing world and we hope to continue trying out new and innovative ways to make games."
More here - http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...ing-sold-at-retail-as-early-access-title.aspx
Sell me beta if old.