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Live Blogging from E3

by Dick Ward July 13th 2008 3:01 PM CDT55 Comments

July 14th 2008 will either go down as a great day for Microsoft, or as a major dissapointment. At 10:30 AM PT, the official Microsoft E3 Press Conference begins. Though there have been many information leaks running wild, Microsoft promises surprises for the Xbox community. Could we see some new Halo game, or will Microsoft unveil the long rumored motion? Dick Ward will be there at Los Angeles, LIVE, and blogging from the show. Stay tuned!
-10:00 AM Pacific Time: Live blogging begins

-10:15 AM Pacific Time: Pre-conference predictions.

-10:30 AM: Press Conference Begins

-Stay tuned for Dick's blog, right here!

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10:00 - Seated.  The crowd is huge! Speculation abounds, of course.  Will we see some new Halo projects?  Xbox waggle control?  We'll find out soon!

10:19 - Music, some cute videos of people talking about 360. Plenty of Wifi problems, lol.

10:30- The event begins with Don Mattrick coming out on stage for an introduction.  Talk about Xbox success in 07

Montage featuring Fallout 3.  Freaking amazng.  The adversizement is great.

10:35 - Todd howard from Bethesda reveals that the trailer we just saw will be available to the public in just a few hours.  Gameplay demo live.  The game looks amazing, especially the 3rd person mode. 

Fallout 3 is absolutely brutal.  The bloody mess perk is essential!  Both the standard FPS mode and turn by turn mode work incredibly well.

Todd shows us a vaiety of weapons including "The Fat Man, a mini nuke catapult.  Needless to say, it's effective.  He also announces exclusive DLC

10:42 - RE5 crew comes out.  First ever playable gameplay demo.  The game looks rediculously good, of course.  Enemies bubble as they die.  An excelletnnt effect.

They show us the online co-op mode, which works very well.  Chainsaw zombie is freaking amazing, but capcom runs out of time before we get to see the combat.  RE5 is being released March 13 2009, simultaneous release!

10:48 - Peter Molyneux "Fable 2 is finished!"

Opener is shown.  Look gorgous of course. The trees look photoreal,  and the environment looks like something out of Charles Dickens. The opening video ends with slo mo bird shit. Honest to god.

Small orbs within the game will act as invites for online co-op.  No lobbys, no XBL interface.  Peter talks up non combat options for multiplayer gameplay, such as getting together and getting drunk in a bar. 

October 2008 release.

10:53 - A Gears of War video starts.  This may be better than the Mad World video, I have chills.  Marcus runs into combat, holding a body sheild.  Cliff comes out.

A cooperative demo starts.  Sort of.  The levels are incredibly epic, players can see a huge way into the distance.  Level design is much improved, and the variety of new enemies is very cool.  An enemy drps a sheild and Cliffy picks it up and uses it.  Very cool stuff.

The flamethrower seems like a really effective weapon. It's got quite a bit of range.  A huge scale fight  starts, trying to keep enemies from entering a building.  Marcus falls down into a burning building and ends up toe to toe with a Brumak.  Woah, you can ride Brumaks!

A 5 player gauntlet style mode is talked about.  Gears of War - November 7th.

11:00 - Casual gaming/business time.  Over $1 billion has been spent on Xbox LIVE.  NBC and Universal added as media partners.

11:11 - Nex xbox dashboard.  It's... interesting.  Looks like the 3d view in Itunes.  Avatars are indeed a part of the system.  Welcome to the Wii60!  They really seem to love them, but the crowd kinda took a dump on the announcement.

Everything in the interface is done with 3d graphics, which could be a huge problem for people with a lot of friends online at once.  Live Party is pretty cool though.  You can join games, share photos, and all that while staying in chat with eachother.

Primetime is a new Xbox channel that brings the gameshow experience to the xbox console.  Real prizes will be won.  I imagine this costs some money. 

Geometry Wars 2 coming out in August.  So is Galaga Legions, which looks really interesting.

Glados announces a 2008 exclusive Portal game exclusive for the 360.

A South Park exclusive XBLA game is also going to be exclusive.  Xbox LIVE arcade is getting big!

Net Flix on 360 confirmed!

11:25 - Shane Kim takes the stage.

Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts is shown, as well as Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise.  I'm gonna need one of the gorilla Pinatas. 

New Scene It game is announced.  It appears to use the Xbox Avatars.

"You're in the Movies" announced.  Works like an Eye Toy game, but looks like it could be some fun.  There are a few different games that need absolutely no controllers.  The console takes footage from all the mini games and turns it into a movie.  Great for families I'm sure, and parties!

10:37 - Guitar Hero World Tour.  85 songs at launch.  Takling about the music studio, so far, nothing we don't already know.

360 gets a timed exclusive on an REM track pack.  Metallica's new album will be downloadable for GH3 on the day the album is released.

11:42 - Lips!  The wireless mics are nice, looks like it can import from Zune, maybe other MP3 players?  Yes, Ipod confirmed.  Mics are motion sensitive for percussion.  Duffy comes out to perform her song on Lips.  Not surprisingly, she does quite well

(battery down to 15% Gonna be cutting it close!)

11:50 - Rock Band 2 Xbox exclusive.  84 song set list.  Holy crap, we're finally getting a song off of Chinese Democracy!  Additional artists include Bob Dylan and AC DC.  Sweet.

DLC as well as original Rock Band tracks will be able to be played in Rock Band 2.  By holiday 08, 500 songs will be available.

11:54 - Yoishi Wada comes to the stage to talk some Square Enix.

Infinite Undiscovery available Sept 2nd in the US.  Star Ocean spring 09.  Last Remnant this holiday.  The new trailer looks pretty sweet, unsurprisingly, similar to Final Fantasy 12.

:Last Remnant worldwide launch on November 20th.  It's also coming out for Windows.  (the first time PC gaming is brought up and it was by Squeenix?)

Holycrap.  Final Fantasy 13 is coming to Xbox 360!