Star Wars Battlefront PC alpha invites are rolling out now

Check your inbox: EA's sending out closed PC alpha invites for Star Wars Battlefront. The chosen few who register in time will get in on early sessions of the upcoming online shooter from the creators of Battlefield, while everybody else will just have to wait until November (or the next test).

According to the invite, as posted on Reddit, the alpha will be distributed exclusively through EA's Origin download service. You'll also want to meet the below minimum system specifications, though keep in mind that these are just for the alpha - a few more months of tweaks and optimization will likely make Battlefront more friendly for a range of hardware.

• CPU: Quad Core CPU e.g. Intel Core i5-2300 @ 2.8 GHz or AMD Phenom II x4 955 @ 3.2 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz
• RAM: 6 GB
• OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8/8.1 (64-bit operating system required)
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 or AMD Radeon HD 7970 with 2 GB of Video Memory

Stay tuned to the Star Wars Battlefront alpha page for more developments, but for now it seems that only Origin users who got the email are eligible to join. They were distributed at random, so being a model Battlefield Hardline citizen unfortunately won't increase your chances.

Still, don't fret too much if you didn't get in. Players in this round of testing will run into a bunch of problems, from server lag to poor performance - that's what alphas are for, after all - and chances are good that Battlefront will get a much more stable open beta closer to its November 17 release date.

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.