We aren't providing pricing information till full GA which is later in the year. All beta users will be given 1TB of free object storage during the beta period.
For me it seems if a developer has to spend more than an hour testing this new product they are better off using S3.
Object storage has been a highly requested feature by our customers and now that we are getting closer to GA we want to ensure that customers get a chance to use the product and provide feedback on usability, bugs, performance, and etc.
But that is fine, if enough users are willing to front the cost of testing.