So many tiny pieces of videogame news have emerged over the last day or so, but despite their relative size to, say, the reveal of a circle pad peripheral for 3DS, they’re still very important and/or interesting.

Just take our word for it.

Let’s try to round up some of the more important bits of tiny game news in this edition of News B33ts:

If you were looking forward to the second of the planned series of ‘weekend beta’ sessions for Star Wars: The Old Republic, then you’ll unfortunately have to look elsewhere for your MMORPG jollies at the close of the week – it’s been postponed until further notice.

Speaking on the official Old Republic forums, community manager Stephen Reid delivered the bad news, saying that “There may be further Beta Testing Weekends during September, but we’re not going to guarantee it.”

“The weekend that just finished was really our first dry run of Beta Testing Weekends as a whole, and we have plenty of data to crunch, and decisions to make before we start things up again.”

That’s the long and the short of it, but you can get a few extra morsels of explanation with Reid’s full forum post.

It was an exciting time for Max Payne fans today as Rockstar Games announced that the third game in the action shooter series, Max Payne 3, would be releasing in March 2012, and even included some multiplayer details in the announcement.

Also revealed today was news of ‘Max Payne HD’ (for lack of a better term) for mobile devices. The original Max Payne will be receiving “the full HD treatment” and will become available for mobile for the first time, with connectivity to Rockstar Games Social Club, as well as the same features as the PC version.

“[I]ncredibly customizable controls and support for wired controllers” will also be available in this mobile HD version of the classic game. No release period has been announced.

How does Activision manage to release a brand new, fully featured Call of Duty game every year?

Of course we know that developers Infinity Ward and Treyarch take turns to create the next game in the franchise, alternating yearly releases between them, but did you know that there are roughly 500 people working on the franchise, even as you read this text?

Speaking in an interview with VentureBeat, Activision’s EVP Dave Stohl revealed the number, saying that there are four or five studios currently working on Call of Duty in some form or another.

We know about Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Sledgehammer and Beachhead, with the fifth studio being online service experts Demonware. Rumours also point to other Activision-owned studios doing their part for the Call of Duty war effort, with Raven and Neversoft possibly contributing content to this year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

You can watch the full interview with Dave Stohl at VentureBeat over here.

Feel like exchanging in-game items from Valve’s Portal 2 and Team Fortress 2 with your friends and other players? Want to trade digital Gifts over Steam?

With Steam Trading, you can! Currently supported by Portal 2, Team Fortress 2 and Spiral Knights (from SEGA and Three Rings), you’re now able to trade these items and Gifts with other members of Steam. More games will support this feature in the future as the Steam team works with other game developers to encourage them to include Trading and Inventory features.

What is considered a Gift and what is considered an in-game item? Why can’t you immediately trade your Gifts? Does this mean you can sell your used games?

All of these questions, and more, answered at the Steam Trading FAQ, over here.

Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling has today confirmed that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will indeed include support for LAN play over PC, posting on his Twitter account:

“Yes, [Modern Warfare 3] has LAN along with detailed class restriction control + default class creation option.”

The ability to restrict “any weapon, equipment, perk, deathstreak, secondary, attachment, ANYTHING from being used when setting up game” is also included as part of this LAN support, Bowling continued.

News B33ts is El33tonline’s way of rounding up smaller morsels of videogame news into one large meal, while ensuring that each bite is just as filling and nutritious as the last. We advise taking breaks between spoonfuls.