Yea, it's a bummer about having to push it further back.

The problem with early betas with the game being so high profiled is that we'd probably get a negative buzz if it was released too early.  Too many casual players would assume that it's "close to final".

In our previous game betas, we always released them relatively early on in development because we had only a hard core group of players who understood that "beta 1" was more like alpha.  We still got a number of people who woudl scream "This is an alpha!!!11!" but most people knew what we were trying to do.

But with all the coverage Sins has gotten, there's a lot of people paying very close attention to what we're releasing. 

So instead, we're trying to share with you the actual game mechanics as they're evolving to get your input and then prepare for beta 1.  But on the bright side, Beta 1 isn't some mutiplayer only beta, it's single player with the multiplayer coming later. So you will definitely get to play it in depth.