Sega is saying that the free Phantasy Star Universe beta, delayed from its original date of October 11th, will now be available on Xbox Live “this weekend.” The unfortunate news is that despite the postponement, sign-ups will still last two days and the beta will still end October 18th. The retail version of the game will launch October 24th for the PC, 360 and PS2, and at that point will cost a subscription fee for online play. A single-player adventure will be playable without extra cost.

Ever since Valve opened Steam to third-party developers, companies have been in a rush to sign their games to the network, which is a relatively simple way for back catalog and indie titles to get distribution that would otherwise be impossible. One of the biggest leaps, however, was today’s news that Activision would deliver an initial batch of its own games to Valve’s network. The first games to arrive on Steam will be the three current games from Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty series as well as Neversoft’s cowboy action title GUN. Call of Duty, its expansion pack, and GUN will all be available for $20 when they become available later this month; as a newer game, Call of Duty 2 will sell for $40. Other games weren’t mentioned as part of Activision’s announcement, though they will likely follow if the early launch proves a success.

Mike Gallo has shared PS3 network secrets with the Official Playstation Magazine podcast. In many ways, the Playstation Network should resemble Xbox Live – players will have a user ID and an online profile, signed in automatically when the console fires up. Disabling auto log-in may be an option. Gallo’s most interesting comment, however, is that Full Auto 2 will use Gamespy as a backend, rather than Xfire or some proprietary Sony system. Gamespy is used primarily for server browsing in PC games. With Xfire being used in Untold Legends, it would seem that PSN is going to be far less regulated than XBL. Does Sony have no plans for matchmaking services of its own?

If you were to judge by the PR rhetoric, you’d think the 360 was an unstoppable commercial juggernaut. As usual though, PR lies. According to Next-Gen, Microsoft’s gaming division lost $1.26 billion US in the fiscal year ending June 2006. But that’s acceptable, COO Kevin Turner tells the San Jose Mercury News. “People forget. Steve [Ballmer] reminds me it took seven, eight, or nine years before Windows was profitable,” he explains. “People forget that. We’re in it for the long term. This is a company committed to invest for the long term.” Microsoft expects to turn the first profit for the 360 in 2008. That may sound dire, but know that Merrill Lynch predicts losses of up to $2.367 billion for the first three years of the PS3.

One of the lesser-known pieces of Wii hardware is the sensor bar. Contrary to what you’d expect, the Wiimote doesn’t just send signals back to the console; it has to read your movements from a neutral position above or below your screen. And the sensor bar may be very sensitive to light, it turns out. A contributor to NintendoGal writes that the bar not only goes berserk under halogen lamps, it may stop working altogether if it’s in direct sunlight. At September’s Nintendo World event, two Metroid Prime 3 kiosks required curtains to work, and a couple of Wii Sports kiosks wouldn’t function at all before falling into shadow. It seems clear that Nintendo’s optical readers may require serious refinement.

Thankfully for us, if not for EA, the elaborate release schedule for the Battlefield 2142 demo has gone to the dogs. It’s now available just about everywhere;  To recap the contents, the demo is 1.08 GB and features one map, Sidi Power Plant. Two game modes are available: Conquest or Titan. Have fun! UPDATE: You may need a new build of DirectX 9 to get the demo working.

Battlefield 2142 Website

Hong Kong exporters Lik-Sang are now accepting PS3 pre-orders. You can choose whatever games you like, and there’ll be no money down until the company secures the “best possible purchase prices, as many units as possible, and until further details emerge from our suppliers all around the world.” But wait – how can Lik-Sang guarantee exports when there’ll be just 500,000 PS3s at launch worldwide? By inflating prices, that’s how. Have a gander at this “extra note:”

Be prepared that the day-1 prices will be much higher than the manufacturers suggested retail price. Experienced and veteran hardcore gamers, who are not importing a system for the first time, know that buying a PS3 at launch or a PSP at launch is not the same thing as simply buying a mere PlayStation 3 or a random PSP off some supermarket shelf. You’re paying for the privilege of getting it two months before the massive overflow. Especially with the long forecasted shortages (only 100.000 units for Japan at release date), MasterCard would call that ‘priceless’. There is never enough of the good stuff on a launch day, and Lik Sang is required to pay premium pricing to get earlybird stock in sufficient levels for everybody. We can only extend these offers to you during the first couple of months, while waiting for the market to stabilize. But that’s the beauty of the No Money Down Special Pre-Order system, you can always ignore day-1 prices and wait for a few more days, a few more weeks, or even several months, until the price goes down to an acceptable level. Without ever losing your pre-order position!

Though not illegal in most circumstances, the company is essentially engaging in price gouging, even if you can wait for prices to settle. Ask yourself how badly you want a PS3 before asking Hong Kong for one.

PopCap Games has published the results of an internal demographics survey, and the results are somewhat surprising. The Bejeweled developer polled 2,191 “casual” gamers, and discovered that a full 76 percent of them were female – well more than the 38 percent figure for US gamers as a whole, claimed by the Entertainment Software Association. Moreover, the average age of women in the PopCap survey was 48, a full 15 years older than the ESA’s gender-neutral average (33). So what’s the explanation? Judging by primary motivations, it could be that juggling motherhood and/or a career takes its toll: 44 percent of women chose “stress relief,” versus just 33 percent of men. “Entertainment” and “mental workouts” ranked relatively low as women’s reasons, at 17 and 16 percent respectively.

Chris Lewis, the head of Microsoft Europe, proclaims that the 360 will have “no shortages anywhere in the region over Christmas.” This is in stark contrast to the launch and Christmas periods of last year, when Microsoft’s manufacturing failed to keep up with demand in any region. Lewis says that production has tripled since then. Moving on to the topic of Xbox Live, Famitsu says that Microsoft will continue the up-to-the-minute Marketplace content it provided during E3 2006. Demos and trailers will probably be limited to Japanese gamers for the upcoming Tokyo Game Show, but at X06 (Sept. 25-29), the floodgates should open.

If you’ve wondered why Blizzard has never talked about porting World of Warcraft to the Wii, 360 or PS3, here’s why. As Blizzard COO Paul Sams says, “One really big challenge is that one of the key features of a massively multiplayer game, especially WoW, is consistent and regular content updates. They require hard drive space, and there’s a finite amount of that on each of those platforms.” Another problem is the amount of certification that content updates would have to go through. “There’s no certification process [for Blizzard PC games] outside of Blizzard’s internal process. When you introduce Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo, you introduce a whole new certification process.” In other WoW news, Blizzard states that there will probably be no open beta of Burning Crusade. This may change, but it’s unlikely to do so.