I suspect this has been requested before as I seem to remember it being asked for in the early days of Cubase VST but Steinberg please consider introducing a public beta program for cubase/nuendo.
It would be an ideal way to engage your core users and would help filter out some of the inevitable bugs and “features” that Steinberg helpfully include in every release.
Additionally it would help manage expectations and disappointments when final versions are released. For example simply labelling existing updates as “beta” would stop 99% of the whinging and annoyance when looooong waited for updates fail to deliver.
If you called 10.0.30 a beta and described the limitations (32bit proccessing/no fade/volume handles/post comp) I bet most on this forum would be saying how brilliant it was
seriously SB, please consider it.
Latest versions are made available, with scope for end user feedback.
Steinberg don’t release updates until they are usable by the broad majority of the userbase, which inevitably causes problems for those on the bleeding edge of DAW use, who might otherwise benefit from using a more stable (read earlier) version since while features are designed to be compatible with future operating systems to the extent that software applications can be supported; legacy systems will not usually support the most up-to-date version of a particular program and as such bugs and the like may be present in existing software given the operating system in use.
Very smart development strategy I’d say and one I have appreciated since steinberg implemented a quicker turnaround for their software.
The situation will be futher enhanced by the unification of the Nuendo and Cubase codebase.
Yeah a nice idea,having a public beta program 
Being a relative newcomer to Cubase,since last year.I was suprised that Steinberg hasn’t done this before.
For the like of other DAWS such as FL Studio ,Ableton,etc,etc they have public beta programs
Be great if we could have have a feature where we could send off real time diagnostic data (with permission of course) So to help the Steinberg team,really sort out the issues etc 
I would agree with Shanabit and Compiositor.
I don’t think there is anything wrong thinking of this as a “public beta” program. But how would it be different than the forum here?
How do you define a “core” user? If you genuinely are a die-hard “core” user with years of Cubase experience, and have the time, then why not become a real Cubase beta tester?
If you break down all posts here, IMO it’s fairly easy to distinguish verified and confirmed bugs apart from users with questions or problems on the user end or problems with their own computer. It’s easy to see users wishing for features. It’s very easy to see users unhappy with either dropped functions or feature changes such as the new right-click change or floating transport. Steinberg representatives don’t ignore their own forum.
If anything it would be nice to see increasing communication between users and Steinberg representatives, especially with confirmed and verified issues. But even then, use caution because often a Steinberg representative can’t give more information because they aren’t the actual coder or person working on the problem. Give a date for a fix and something last minute goes wrong, guess who gets the blame? Martin helps out, but even he is limited. And NDA’s always exist due to competition.
FL and Ableton do not have nearly the amount of features found in Cubase. Not even PT or Logic. What may work with those DAWs doesn’t mean it would necessarily work with Cubase. I have confidence that someone in Steinberg marketing is aware of those public beta programs too.
Keep the big perspective in mind. A user forum represents a very small percentage of all users. I would guess the majority of all Cubase users are not even on C10. Many stay with what they need over time…even C6 for many. There are some users in forums that don’t even use Cubase as a tool to complete a track. Instead their hobby is to push every Cubase function and feature to the extreme as they are focused on Cubase or the other DAW’s alone. Then they expose the problems in forums. This is just one example of a person who loves to focus on DAW’s.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t necessarily work. I’m saying they are aware how other public forums work and unlike myself, they know the resources it would take including the potential pitfalls applicable to the Cubase environment that is unlike other DAW’s.
I have +1’d this before, I couldn’t find my post so it was probably in the old forum at this point. But yeah, years ago they did just this. There was the “stable” version, and then the public beta version that you could optionally run if you wanted. I think there was a forum/channel dedicated to that, and it was run quite a bit more strictly than the general forum. That was needed in order to keep the comments and answers and general thread progress usable.
There was one dedicated Cubase dev who was highly active in that forum. If you found an issue, you could report it there and often within a small handful of days (or less) there would be an actual real back-and-forth with the dev, and very often the suggestions or fixes were added to the beta version, and often in the same week. A significant number of these issues were getting fixed regularly and quickly, and being able to witness and at times take part in the debugging and proposed fix discussions was a very positive experience. Not to mention that there was a regular stream of small but not insignificant fixes and occasional improvements.
@Steinberg, please bring back a public beta channel.