Epic VP Mark Rein issued a short statement late tonight, confirming that a PC beta demo for his company's upcoming shooter Unreal Tournament 3 could be released as early as this week.

"The development team feels they're pretty close to being ready to release this," said Rein on the Epic forums, "so it could come out this week but for safety sake I'd say it should be out within two weeks."

According to Rein, the beta will feature standard online play, as well as an offline instant-action mode, allowing players to face off against the Epic team's oft-touted AI bots.

"The purpose of the Beta Demo is to test the game on a large variety of hardware configurations and get gameplay feedback from the community," he added.

Shacknews is currently attending an Unreal Tournament 3 press event at Epic headquarters in Cary, North Carolina, so be sure to check back later in the week for impressions of the new game "from the makers of Gears of War."