Conference opens with Rockstar Beatles (seems like almost the full intro), which has cell-shaded animation. Graphics for the intro (CGI) start looking really rather amazing towards the end, seems like a very ambitious project!
EDIT: Eurogamer.net
Beatles game demo, multiple singers now (3 mikes). A lot of time spent on this!
360 has some exclusive downloadable songs for this game apparently (at least All You Need is Love is ... proceeds go to Doctors without Borders)
Also Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison on-stage
Paul Harrison and Ringo Starr on-stage! Trying to be funny. Trying.
All about showing rather than telling.
Announces no graphs will show 10 brand new games will be shown now that haven't been seen before.
New interface will be shown for online gaming (Home ish?)
First up, Tony Hawk. Thankfully this guy can talk, shows the very high-tech board with infra-red sensors, accellerometers etc. Plenty of difficultly levels to cater for all sorts of skills. Trailer comes up next. The board does look really slick. And the moves you do on them seem to allow you to go quite far into emulating manipulating your board, pretty cool.
Lame, my IGN feed got killed. Switching to G4.tv, which shows Modern Warfare 2 I think, gameplay (someone is playing)`
Two map packs will be released first on 360
SquareEnix up next. Showing the FFXIII demo running on 360 for the first time. As I predicted elsewhere, the game engine is already in development and even up and running, so the previous statement that the 360 version would be worked on only once the PS3 version was done is hereby overruled. They're showing a summons (Odin) not normally available this early but put in just for this presentation.
From here on only exclusives.
Mark Rein presents the first exclusive, an XBLA game called Shadow Complex. It's a room-based side-scroller - or it looks like it, but there is some depths on it actually, you can move into the depth a little sometimes it seems.
Joy Ride, a cartoony Trackmania like game shown next, using the avatars. Scrap that, he calls it a cart-racer. Available this winter. Tracks purchaseable separately?
Game shown next looks like Crackdown 2 or something similar. Looks good. Yep, Crackdown 2.
Left for Dead 2? A zomby game located down-south. Yep. Left 4 Dead 2, November 17, published by Valve.
Ubisoft up next. Conviction, clearly. Fisher, yes. No gameplay to be seen yet. Ah here it comes. Very hardcore now, very 24, very violent. Presentation is slick. Seems like Conviction, Beyond Good and Evil 2, Assasisn's Creed share a lot of tech now. Lot of climbing, but Sam is a much slower game still (allows for nice looking graphics, obviously, lots of lighting effects too). Sound is full of real-time effects. The whole geometry lights up red when you get hurt it seems, rather than a simple flat filter effect. Released this fall.
Forza 3 up next. They're going to show the actual game. Cockpit view confirmed, with free looking around. Lighting inside the car is still weak, but you can flip over! 400 cars / 50 manufacturers, gameplay rewind. Talking up the new community features now. Create and upload high-dev video. They're showing a bunch of cars doing a ballet, driven first by players, then the movie edited from within the game (camera angels, slow motion, etc.). Also one of the cars had a painted hood. Ships this October - ouch GT5
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Bungie up next. ODST shown, starts with Killzone like intro of landing (Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, obviously. You're a rookie. Two sound suppressed weapons and a visor for low vision circuomstances. Refers to the old Halo 1 pistol, saying that the new one is cooler. Lot of tech ... someone in the G4 comments mentions Metroid Prime as an influence. That could definitely be right. There are some interesting audio flashbacks in the game at that point. Next bit of gameplay looks very familiar with flying enemies, charges to be set, etc. A ladder? Release date 22nd september.
But Bungie have another project to show, Halo Reach ... seems a replay of The Fall of Reach. 2010 release. ODST comes with a Reach multiplayer beta invitation. Too bad for Crackdown 2, but hopefully it can stand on its own legs now.
Alan Wake up next. Script written by a famous best selling author. Everything shown in-game engine. So far the graphics look good - great use of lighting and shadow, there's a darkness enemy that you can actually hurt with your flashlight. Final voice suggests part of these things are in dreams. They make a huge mistake in using a past tense narrative voice - when you're playing the game, you don't want that sense of fatality, that it doesn't matter what you do - you can only fail or not fail playing out the pre-set path and the end is already clearly known. Release Spring 2010.
Games end. Radio stations coming to 360, with radio.fm as an example.
Netflix browsing on 360 confirmed, with direct play.
UK premiere league stuff mentioned on Eurogamer.net repeated here.
Next, VideoLibrary will now be Zune Video. HD library will be upgraded to 1080p, no more downloading but now instant streaming, coming to 18 countries.
Next, you'll be able to share stuff with your friends, like the thing with the Sky deal in the UK. You see a Live party group of avatars, sitting in front of a TV, so you can watch stuff together and chat about it.
Next, Facebook partnership, full integration into xbox live. The Guild Star Felicia Day talks it up. It's very strongly integrated into the NXE, and you can hook up facebook accounts to xbox live accounts. You can basically see almost all the facebook stuff in the NXE - doesn't look too convenient or practical, but it gets more interesting - you can do screenshots from your games straight to facebook.
Also, Twitter integration! You can 'tweet' from your xbox, and watch the live twitters on your screen (scattered in textbox stuff). It's all coming to Xbox Live in the Fall update.
Don Mattrick coming up next. Kojima on stage, Metal Gear for 360. Don makes bad Metal Geal joke, probably by accident. Kojima speaks English, thankfully. Metal Gear Solid: Rising is underway and in development for 360. It's not a Solid Snake game, clearly. Raiden back in the saddle. Don says xbox library is finally complete.
Motion controller coming up! But of course, it's the camera stuff that has been leaked. But they seem to be pretty far ahead with the stuff - you see one on one motion capture for fighting, racing, and all sorts of stuff using voice recognition, code name is Natal and is basically 3d camera detection with voice recognition, face recognition, etc.. Will work with every Xbox 360 (obviously?) and seems to be integrated with the NXE as well. Also showed a skateboard that was scanned in and then used inot a game.
Spielberg brought on stage. Speech summary: Microsoft hasn't invented the wheel, it has invented the 'no wheel at all'
Now we get a live demo to show how far they are. Live demo shows NXE integration, and a type of full body breakout (Ricochet), where you can move to and fro and use all your body to hit (slam, kick, etc.) and bounce back balls, etc. Uses real physics. Pretty good and looks totally exhausting. I like that in a game. They say they'll be able to do this multi-player as well.
Next demo coming up: painting by throwing paint at the canvas. Doesn't look as interesting as the rest.
Final word there is interesting though: development kits are arriving with partners today.
Peter Molyneux up for the final bit it seems. I think he's going to announce a Natal game. Lionhead have been able to play around with this for three months. He's showing Milo, who is a virtual boy you can interact with. He recognises your emotions from your face, and they even do a trick where you draw something on a piece of paper and then give it to him virtually in a very clever way. You can interact with a pond of fish. Etc. There are a lot of ideas from Sony integrated here, but this 3d camera controller seems to be the real deal. My wife is excited about it. This demo is shown live to selected members of the press during E3.
