We made some playtests. It's an amazing experience, but it doesn't compare to a beta launch. Playtests are very useful to see how players react to the game and if they behave as intended or something is miscommunicated.
But it still doesn't compare to beta. Beta allows for big data analysis, but in order to achieve that, you need a volume of downloads or the data won't be reliable.
This is our biggest problem right now. We need data from our users but we cannot get the desired bulk of downloads.