They've said it quite a lot yet not many people understand yet - the current patches contain lots of engine modules and mechanics fixes leading up to beta. There is a significant amount of content backlogged up since last year that *cannot* be released until the new engine modules are finished. This is a slower but more rewarded period of DayZ's development and by the end of it we could be seeing beta. To those who might not understand why these things take so long, I implore you get into game development and go try and rewrite an old legacy engine with outdated scripts - it is not an easy task. They can only employ so many new people because the engine is so complicated that it would take too long to have people trained to know how to work with it. Be patient.
