• Geoff Johns hints at a live action Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle TV series
• Mostly empty Game of Thrones teaser hits the web

• Christopher Mintz Plasse and David Tennant join the Marti Noxon penned remake of Fright Night
• The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made gets a release date of Christmas 2011
• Batman Year One animated adaptation in the works from the DC Universe Animation Studios
• Footage released for proposed Mortal Kombat reboot
• Harry Potter filming wraps
• Sam Raimi considering directing The Great and Powerful Oz, and delaying World of Warcraft. RDJ attached to star
• Green Lantern writing team hired to pen Green Lantern 2 and The Flash
• Aaron Johnson and Anton Yelchin added to Spider-Man “short”list; villain to be The Lizard?
• RUMOR: Joseph Gordon Levitt to play the Riddler in Batman 3?
• Transformers 3 – 3D and Shockwave confirmed as villain

• New Xbox 360 design is officially revealed
• Project Natal officially renamed “Kinect for Xbox 360″
• Rock Band 3 adds Keys and Harmonizing
• Telltale Games to develop episodic games based on Back to the Future and Jurassic Park
• Comic Jumper video
• Scott Pilgrim is timed PS3 exclusive

Geek Jerk Reaction: Toy Story 3, Jonah Hex

Just Cause 2 is a game I never would have paid attention to if it weren’t for this intriguing video. The game looks to be loaded with a ton of cool “action movie” stunts such as a whole section of this demo where the player is hanging off several different cars during a high speed chase, not to mention starting things off witha little base jumping. I never played the original, but I am certainly considering the sequel.

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This new Castlevania game looks to be taking more than few pages out of the God of War playbook, but the impressive voice cast featuring Patrick Stewart, Natasha McElhone, and Jason Isaacs certainly has me interested.

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If you haven’t seen the phenomenal cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, go watch it now….I’ll wait. Snippets of the trailer are intercut with this interview of Gordon Walton from Bioware explaining why you should be excited for their new Star Wars MMO.

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Several people from many different gaming sites are calling Scribblenauts their favorite game of the show this year. After watching several videos, including this live demo, I can see why. The game allows you to type in just about any noun you can think of, and it will spawn in the game world, helping you to complete different puzzles. The tens of thousands of words in Scribblenauts’ dictionary means we’ll be able to let our imaginations run wild.

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Mod Nation Racers aims to bring the user creativity and game customization from LittleBigPlanet into the kart racing genre. This is the demonstration from Sony’s press conference in which they show off the track creator by creating a complete racetrack in just a few minutes.

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The studio behind The Conduit revealed two of their upcoming games this week. One of them is The Grinder, a Left 4 Dead style game for the Wii in which you take on the role of a monster hunter in order to slay waves of classic monsters such as vampires and werewolves. The final game isn’t slated for release until late 2010, but the game already looks pretty promising. The demo only has one player, but The Grinder will include online co-op play for up to four players.

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Put Nazi-occupied Paris, a race car driver, and a stylized B&W art style together, and you get The Saboteur. This open-world game features B&W graphics that are accented with the occasional splash of color. However, as you progress through the game, color comes back into the world as you bring “hope” to the people.

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In Darksiders, you play as one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The problem is that the Apocalypse happened when it wasn’t supposed to. This game looks like an interesting mix of gameplay conventions from God of War, Zelda, and Grand Theft Auto.

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Aliens vs Predator may have a bad stigma at the box office, but it has a pretty good reputation in the video game world. The creators behind the original PC game are bringing the AvP universe to the current generation of consoles. This is a live demonstration of gameplay from the Predator campaign.

The short answer to the question above is: No. You would have thought that Nintendo would have learned a few lessons from last year, but their conference this year was very similar. Someone should remind the Big N that doing a Show & Tell requires you to actually show things and not just talk for a majority of the time. You may be pretty proud of what you are achieving, but that doesn’t mean we want to hear about it ad nauseam. If you are really being as innovative as you claim, perhaps it would be a good idea to show us rather than to stand there talking about it.

Nintendo kicked things off with a montage promo video followed by a lot of talk about how gaming is for “everyone”. They then showed off New Super Mario Bros Wii, a scrolling 2D platformer featuring the rotund plumber and his pals. The game is designed to be played with up to four people at once. A multiplayer Mario was a good start, but Nintendo just couldn’t seem to stop talking long enough to show many games, and most of the ones they did show were rather lackluster.

Next up was the reveal of WiiFit Plus, an expansion of Nintendo’s popular fitness software that is coming in the fall this year. After a lot of talk about the importance of interface to gaming, WiiMotionPlus is mentioned, and WiiSports Resort is shown. Some new minigames were revealed including skydiving, archery, and basketball. After a trailer for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers it was time to move on to the Nintendo DS.

Several DS games were mentioned with a small amount of footage to go with them. Notable titles coming for the handheld include Kingdom Hearts, Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, and Golden Sun DS. Non-notable titles that still got quite a bit of attention were James Patterson Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion, C.O.P.: The Recruit, and Style Savvy.

When Nintendo’s global president, Satoru Iwata, took the stage, I thought something good was in store. Surely he would have something interesting to reveal. Instead he took several minutes to talk about innovation only to show a new Wii peripheral called the Wii Vitality sensor. Basically, you stick your finger in it and it takes your pulse. Someone must have thought it would be a good idea to turn some basic hospital equipment into a video game accessory.

Nintendo went back to talking about games for a while to reveal Super Mario Galaxy 2. The trailer for the game looked a lot like the original Galaxy, with the addition of Yoshi into the mix. I loved Super Mario Galaxy, so a sequel is welcome news, but unfortunately Nintendo said nothing about a release date. After that, Nintendo “wowed” the crowd by talking about three third party games coming this year: The Conduit, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, and Dead Space Extraction. I think all three games look interesting, but we have already seen a lot about each before this conference started, especially for The Conduit which comes out in a couple weeks. Where were all the new games that we should be clamoring to play?

The show closed out with a welcome surprise for me. They revealed that Team Ninja (of Ninja Gaiden fame) is collaborating with Nintendo on a new Metroid title that is supposed to be “edgier”. It is called Metroid: Other M, and the trailer for the game looked pretty good, despite the generic title. As a Metroid fan, I’m all for a new Metroid title, and right now it is slated for release in the spring of 2010. As welcome as this news was, it was too little and too late to save Nintendo’s briefing.

Nintendo seemed too focused on talking about how innovative they are and how gaming is for everyone. Instead of showing a lot of titles, all we got were a few short trailers peppered in between lots of lecturing. Red Steel 2 was notably absent from the show, a big mistake in my opinion as it looked great during Ubisoft’s conference Monday night. The demo of that game did a lot to convince me that WiiMotionPlus is actually worthwhile, and it looks to be everything the first Red Steel should have been. Also missing from Nintendo’s show was any mention of a brand new Pikmin sequel, something that has been confirmed that Nintendo is working on (and rumored to be at the show this year). A new WiiMotionPlus Zelda title was a no-show, even though I wasn’t particularly expecting it to show up.

Had Nintendo included more games in their briefing, it would have been a much better outing. As it was, they totally dropped the ball again, in similar fashion to last year. The few interesting announcements were revealed to little fanfare, and they weren’t enough to keep the conference afloat amid all the boring lectures. At this point, Nintendo is so far out in left field that they seemingly don’t know how to create a show that actual gamers are interested in. Todays showing felt more like something geared towards investors, and I think even they would have had a hard time staying awake.

Nintendo’s conference was by far the worst of E3 this year. Even taking the talkative James Cameron into account, Ubisoft’s conference Monday night was far more successful at showing off games than Nintendo was able to do this morning.

Microsoft certainly “dressed to impress” with their conference this year. Their presentation stages are usually pretty lavish, but the stage this year seemed to have a few more lights and gizmos than years past. If anyone was worried that Microsoft was compensating for something, it wouldn’t take too much time to calm their fears.

The show started with a long presentation of The Beatles Rock Band. The opening cinematic was shown, featuring some impressive animation. Several people then came on-stage to demo the game, playing through the entirety of Day Tripper. The screens of the game looked almost exactly like Rock Band, however there were three people harmonizing, and the instruments looked rather impressive. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr came on to much pomp and circumstance, but they pretty much said “We think the game is good” and left the stage.

After a long time spent on The Beatles Rock Band, Tony Hawk came out to show off his new skateboard controller for Tony Hawk Ride. The controller features several accelerometers and even something that lets you move your foot to the side of it to accelerate, just like a real skateboard. Honestly, he should have just said “It’s like a real skateboard, only without wheels.” It would have been much simpler.

At this point, I was hoping that Microsoft would show something more impressive. Luckily the next thing they had up their sleeve was a presentation for Modern Warfare 2. After a trailer, they did a live demo of the game onstage, and everything looked very impressive. The level shown was out in the snow, and the graphical detail was very high. Snow was stuck to the characters’ clothes and blowing in the air, and everything looked very “cold”. The demo began with a cliff climbing sequence, and then it skipped ahead to a sequence set on an enemy compound during a blizzard. The blizzard provides cover, but the enemy soon discovered the player’s presence and explosions and gunfire quickly broke out. The demo culminated in an exciting chase aboard snowmobiles. Yes, you can still fire a pistol while tearing through the snow-covered countryside.

After that, the games kept on flowing. Final Fantasy XIII was demoed on the Xbox, and it looked very good. Epic Games presented a brand new title for XBox Live Arcade called Shadow Complex that was apparently inspired by 2D Castlevania and Metroid games. Trailers were shown for Crackdown 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Splinter Cell Conviction before the latest of Sam Fisher’s adventures was demoed onstage. Splinter Cell Conviction’s live demo was very stunning in both graphics and gameplay. It looks like Sam Fisher is going to be more of a badass this time around, as a ton of bad guys were quickly dispatched during the demo. Microsoft then took some time to show off Forza 3 which wasn’t very impressive to me, but it looks like it will probably go over well with fans of the series.

Next up was Halo ODST, and it didn’t disappoint. The game will switch things up a bit, allowing you to “flash back” and play sections with different characters in different areas, piecing the story together bit by bit. Lots of things blew up, and it looked very pretty. The presentation from Bungie ended with the announcement of Halo Reach, promising to show you the beginning of the Halo story coming sometime in 2010. However, those who purchase ODST will get into the Reach multiplayer beta. Halo fans seem to have a lot to look forward to.

Next up was a game that most had assumed to be vaporware until now, Alan Wake. The game is now slated to come out in the spring of 2010, and the in-game demo of the Alan Wake looked very good. The game appears to feature a voice-over while you play like someone is telling a story, and title cards like “Previously on Alan Wake” seem to imply an episodic structure. The lighting and particle effects in the demo were particularly impressive. At one point, Alan Wake pulls out a typical flare, but when he sets it off, the flare spews out sparks and a ton of smoke, looking very realistic.

After showing off several games, Microsoft turned their attention to XBox Live. To that end, they announced that last.fm, Facebook, and Twitter will be coming to the XBox, and soon we will be able to add movies to our Netflix queues through the 360 interface. Bonus points go to Microsoft for getting Felicia Day to do the Facebook presentation. Also coming XBox Live is 1080p video content that will supposedly play instantly, and the previously announced Live Party will let you watch content with your friends over XBox Live.

Next Microsoft went on to announce their new motion control camera system, but not before a surprise appearance of Hideo Kojima to announce Metal Gear Solid Rising for the 360. The teaser trailer for the game proclaims that “Raiden is back”, implying that Solid Snake will not be in this game or at least not be the focus.

Now back to that camera. To be honest, I was a little disappointed that it didn’t seem to be that far along. Despite spending a lot of time focusing on the new “Project Natal”, everything seemed to be in the prototype stage. There was a lot of “this is what we hope to do” and “this is what we could do” rather than “this is what we’re doing”. It all seemed very hypothetical to me, and any mention of a price or release window was nowhere to be found.

Several videos were shown, talking about what the peripheral can do, including facial recognition, full body motion capture, moving menu pages with the wave of a hand, and other actions. One demo was for a game that looks very similar to the soccer minigame found in WiiFit, except in the XBox version, you are punching and kicking balls into a wall of bricks in an effort to break them down. Microsoft also showed a painting game that seemed like the equivalent of throwing cans of paint at a wall.

After that, Peter Molyneux came out to show a video of Lionhead Studios’ new tech demo, an interactive character named Milo that utilizes the Project Natal camera to interact with the player. In the video, the woman talks to Milo and he responds to her, but the whole thing felt very scripted and perhaps even staged. It didn’t help that Molyneux was in full-on hype mode, making some pretty far-fetched claims about what was going on.

Overall, I think that Microsoft had a pretty strong showing this year, despite the disappointing “what if” attitude while showing off the new camera peripheral. They showed some great looking games, and there were even a few surprises like the announcements of Left 4 Dead 2 and a new Metal Gear game for 360. They had a few stumbles during the presentation, but it never came to the point where they completely dropped the ball. It wasn’t quite the “revolutionizing of home entertainment” that was hyped before E3, but the Microsoft Conference still had quite a bit of news to share. The complete lack of sales charts was also a big plus in my book.

I’m not sure what Nintendo and Sony have in store for us on Tuesday, but I think that Microsoft left the door open for someone to completely blow us away this year. Will Nintendo or Sony be able to do that? I’m not sure, but I am definitely excited to find out. I will be back later this week to share my thoughts on each of their conferences.

One of the biggest problems with the show was that Microsoft seemed as if they wanted to rush through all their announcements because they had so many. As a result, a lot of the news didn’t get the time it needed in order to be understood by gamers.

Major Nelson runs a podcast over on his website where he often talks about the 360, his job at Microsoft, etc. Well, yesterday he put up an episode where he could just go over everything, go into more details where need be, etc. Give it a listen if you have time and you are interested. If you don’t have time but are interested, I’ll try to sum up some of the details. So keep reading.

New Xbox Experience:

• Avatars are optional. You can choose to use your gamerpic instead.
• Many 3rd party developers are already thinking of ways to use Avatars. Fallout developer thought of the idea of releasing a hazmat avatar suit. Developers will be able to release clothing pieces and stuff with their games.
• All themes, gamerpics, etc will work with the new system.
• This update will "definitely be out this year".
• You will be able to install games to the hard drive of your system, and play them from there. You still will have to insert the disc to verify you own it. However, after that, it will not spin from the drive at all. Also, all games will support the HDD install, not just new games.
• Also works "really slick" with multi disc games. You can install the first disc only, 2 of the 3, whatever you want.
• Fully optional to install to HDD.
• Xbox Marketplace online. Go via your computer to Live, buy/choose a piece of content. When you turn on your 360, it automatically starts downloading the content you chose online.
• RSS feed will be available online so that you can monitor new content.
• Primetime is broadcast simultaneously, everyone will be able to answer the same questions. You can win real prizes. Major Nelson is trying to host one.
• Xbox Live Party System – So cool, but you may have to try it to realize it’s full potential. 8 players. Allows you to assemble your friends, go into any game as a group. You stay together as a party between friends. If 4 players want to play Gears of War, and 4 wants to play Uno…you can do that. You don’t have to be in the same game. Works with every single Xbox 360 game. Obviously you’ll have to have a multiplayer game that supports that many players.You could have 4 different co-op games, for instance.
• New display support 16×10. Letterboxing so nothing gets stretched.
• Current Dashboard is built into the new Xbox Guide. The current blades system will make up the new guide button feature. Every single thing you can do in the  dashboard will be in the new guide. No ads, pretty obviously. But you can browse the marketplace for content, for example. It will detect your game, and assume you want that content.
• If you don’t want to use the new dashboard, you could always leave your game in the system, and operate the whole system from the new guide rather than the dashboard.
• Optimizing the speed, so it will be "wicked fast". Thank God.
• It’s pretty much done, but not code complete. The changes will be tweaks.

Netflix:

• Two requirements for Netflix: You must be a Gold Member. You must be a Netflix subscriber that has unlimited instant watch. Which means the cheapest subscription plan ($4.99, apparently) won’t work, but the rest do. So starting at like the $8.99 plan.
• Lots of Anime for anime plans.
• In order to use Netflix in the Party system, all members must meet the requirements of watching Netflix. That’s sad, but understandable.

Lips:

• 2nd player can join in just by picking up your mic and shaking it. Then you will be in a duet with the first player.
• You can use your Zune/iPod with any non-DRM song.

Rockband 2:

• You will have a fee to export your Rockband 1 songs off your disc. Probably like $5. Most likely to pay for the fees of re-lisencing the songs.

Final Fantasy XIII:

• North America and Europe, but not Japan. It will come out at the same time as the PS3 version.

Alright, I have to apologize up front. The evil podcast faeries came along and stole 2 hours of this episode from my computer. I went into the living room, and came back to an 11 minute episode. I don’t know what happened. One minute it was there, the next it was not.

So, what you are about to hear is the live version of the show. For the most part, it is decent quality. There are some sections where it has bad echos though. My apologies. Again, I have no idea what happened to the good version. If the echoing gets too bad, it fixes itself after a little bit. Hope you enjoy!

2:36 – Congerence is FINALLY getting started. Cool intro with floating X’s, O’s, Traingles and Squares.

2:38 – This Sony guy is the most personable host of the coferences so far. That isn’t saying much. But still.

2:43 – He is talking about the history of the franchise, and the 10 year life cycle of their consoles. Making points about how some of their franchises always start late in the life cycle of their consoles. It’s a  "You should be getting excited for the future" speech.

2:47 – Luckily we finally get to see some content I think. He was starting to drone on and get wordy. Got enough of that from Nintendo.

2:48 – Resistence 2 gameplay being shown. With their 500 foot boss. Looks nice. Very Cloverfield-esque.

2:53 – 8 player online co-op, 60 player competition mode online. Going to show a new trailer with game footage. VERY nice looking trailer. Very moving. San Francisco is getting pounded by tons of of Motherships.

2:56 – Little Big planet being talked about now.

2:58 – The game is all about creating content. They’ve used the game to create a level to present the sales figures for Sony. A unique and more interesting way than it is usually presented. Very cute. :)

3:02 – That wasn’t painful at all. Thank God for showing some innovation with their presentation of sales numbers.

3:03 – Little Big Planet releases October 2008.

3:04 – Talking about PS2. Why? Yes, it sells better, but focus on the future, not the past. Do people still buy new PS2 games? Stop it.

3:07 – Now talking about Singstar and Buzz, their singing and trivia games. Buzz comes to PS3 in September.

3:08 – $149 bundle for PS2 with Lego Batman game and Justice League: New Frontiers movie included. WTF?

3:09 – Playstation Network. Let’s see if they can meet Xbox Live’s challenge. They are going to a single user sign in for all games. They didn’t have that before? Suck. Anyway, across PS3, PSP, and PC it will be the same user.

3:10 – Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty. Playstation Network game. Shorter game, online download. $15 this summer.

3:14 – First shot at the competition I’ve caught this E3: "We’re not interested in filling up our stores with titles no one wants to play just so we can say we have the most". I doubt they’ve ever turned down a game for their network from a game studio.

3:17 – Gran Turismo TV Pay Per View coming to Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Apparently you can watch pay per view on actual real life racing and crap. I wonder how many people care about that crap. Starting August 1st.

3:19 – Talking about Trophies now, their version of Achievements.

3:20 – Talking about Home now. They said the wait will be paid off when Public Beta launches. They are going to create stuff from game developers and non-gaming companies like Nike in game. New Video. Sorry, I don’t get the "Social Gaming". Not for me.

3:24 – Talking about their upcoming movies store. Naming their content providers, etc. You can put your content on the PSP, and take it with you.

3:27 – Showing off the video store now. Maybe they should have brought back Little big Planet. That got a bit dull. The new content goes live tonight.

3:30 – Moving on to PSP now. New Ratchet and Clank entertainment pack. New Resistance Retribution PSP game.

3:35 – PSP Gameplay Montage. Lots of games.

3:40 – Life with Playstation. News, sports, weather. Blah, Blah. Welcome to Wii a year ago.

3:41 – Talking about DC Universe Online. They are trying to claim that SOE is good. Don’t buy that. Worst MMOs on the market. :P

3:42 – Jim Lee comes out to talk to DC Universe Online. He is "Literally Pumped" to be here. Sounds painful.

3:44 – First DC trailer….They are making it look like you actually play as the established characters. And those animations look horrible. Typical bad SOE animations. Reminds me of Star Wars Galaxies and its jerkiness.

3:47 – Starting in September you can get the 80 gig pack for the price of the current 40 gig pack at $399.

3:49 – Developers talking about how the Playstation 3 is powerful for making games.

3:53 – Another reel of random games.

3:56 – God of War 3 trailer. Short. Completely CG. Obviously doesn’t look too far along.

3:57 – Time for inFamous. Free Running + Super Powers + Choice of Good or Evil. Looks sweet.

4:00 – One final title that pushes "even the PS3 architecure to the extreme". It "can’t be done on any other system". MAG: Massive Action Game. Up to 256 player battles. Teams will be broken down into 8-player teams with people that have shown themselves to be good leaders leading the teams. Character growth. Trailer time.

4:03 – Looks like another CGI trailer. Reminds me of Frontlines: Fuel of War with more players. Eh. Looks ok. Not earth shaking. Looks like chaos and lag, to me.

4:05 – And they are done. A well organized presentation without many big announcements.

Following on the heels of yesterday’s Microsoft  conference, it’s time for Nintendo to step up to the plate. In my opinion, Nintendo needs a good show. I considered last year to be a flop with only Wii Fit and Mario Kart as their major announcement. But more importantly, I feel that Microsoft threw down the gauntlet yesterday when they announced their Avatars (Creepily similar to Miis). Either way, I will be covering the event live. I’ll type everything as it happens here, in case you can’t or don’t want to watch. Then I’ll try to post some actual articles about what happens. Though with the Sony event coming up following the Nintendo conference, it may be a bit later.

12:00pm – Here we go. Getting started…

12:08 – The show is live now.

 12:10 – Shaun White Snowboarding announced using Wii balance board. Saw that coming. Looks pretty intuitive and easy. An improvement on using the board purely for aerobics.It’s exclusive to Wii. Duh?

12:15 – Nintendo president is on stage now.

12:18 – The makers of Mario and Zelda are hard at work on new games (I take that to mean they won’t be announcing anything then). However, the new titles like Wii Sports and Wii Fit are also important, and have been well supported by consumers. Sales stats, sales stats, sales stats. Microsoft kept it to like 5 minutes. Why can’t everyone else? Hearing it in Japanese heavy English makes it even hard to take.

12:22 – Zzzzzzzz

12:23 – Creator of Animal Crossing on a video now to announce "Animal Crossing: City Folk". World goes on without you. Adds a city-scape. You can choose to "Put on a mask to look like your Mii" rather than that creepy looking little boy. New accessory called "Wii Speak". Allows everyone in your room to talk to a room full of other players. That sounds like a "bad idea". They didn’t want to make a head set. Ultimately, it looks like the DS version. Guess that’s cool if you dig that game.

12:28 – Reggie announces the game will release "by the end of the year" with the Wii speak microphone. Oh for crying out loud. More freaking sales numbers. I get it. Wii and DS sells. Announce some stuff.

12:33 – Thought he said he was going to keep this short.

12:36 – Thank God. He shut up finally. Now showing Star Wars Clone Wars with light saber duels. Easily the coolest thing shown so far. Holiday 2008.

12:37 – Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party – Looks like another big mini-game game. Which is cool. Rayman is very fun.

12:38 – Call of Duty World at War. Looks meh, like most realistic games on the Wii.

12:40 – More stats. Girls like DS. Guitar Hero On Tour Decades is on the way. As is Spore Creatures. Also known as the gimped version.

12:43 – Pokemon Rangers: Shadows of something or another. DS Game. Plus Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars. Set in Liberty City. That’s pretty big, for a hand held.

12:44 – Using the DS for Airport stuff, resteraunt locators, etc. Ok? Oh, and a cookbook.

12:47 – Reggie comes on stage to talk about the Wii Motion Plus. Something that was announced yesterday or the day before. It’s a clip-on for the Wii-mote that makes it more accurate. Thank God.

12:48 – Wii Sports Resort "is literally a day at the beach".The first game on the title…discus with your dog. The motion plus seems to improve your control a lot. The game looks a bit cheesy. Also, the game will come with a motion plus and a Wii mot jacket.

12:50 – A Jet Ski game in Wii Sports. That looks pretty cool. Should be a full Wave Race game.

12:52 – 1 to 1 (What you do, your Mii does) sword dueling. Cool.

12:54 – Wii Sports launches next spring. Did it seriously take that long to realise such a cool idea needed a sequel?

 12:56 – Some free range drumming being shown using the wiimote/nunchuck as drum sticks. And the Balance Board as a bass pedal. Now, Miyamoto is play the Saxaphone with the wiimote. It’s for Wii Music. Sounded pretty good. How will it sound for regular people. And ultimately, what’s the point? Apparently, there is no skill involved. The Wii plays the notes based on the song you are playing.

1:01 – Violin, Sax, Drums, Guitar, Piano, A variety of percussion instruments.The drums feature a lesson to teach you to play the drums "in just a few weeks". Orchestra game is included in Wii Music.

1:05 – Got a group of people making a band to play the Mario song live. Very weird. Kind of cool, but games that play themselves don’t usually end up being much fun.

1:08 – Are they seriously wrapping things up now? I hope to God they have a cool announcement to wrap things up with.

1:10 – ….nope. God, what a horrible conference. That’s worse than the Sony E3 2006 conference.

Fallout 3: Exclusive DLC for Xbox 360 (In addition to PC)

Resident Evil 5: Online Co-op is included. Friday, March 13th 2009 release date

Fable 2: Release date October 2008. Online Co-op confirmed.

Gears of War 2: Ride a Brumak, 5-player co-op streaming enemy mode online, but story-mode apparently only 2 players. Release date November 7th

Xbox Dashboard Face Lift: Completely re-designed dashboard. Mii-like avatars. 8-player party system used to play games, chat, share photos, and share netflix (!) movies. Lots of clothing and accessory options. Apparently partially designed by Rare. Release date: Fall 2008

XBL Arcade/Primetime: 1 vs. 100 (Avatars, win real prizes, blah blah), Geometry Wars 2, Galaga Legions, Portal: Still Alive (Exclusive to Xbox 360. New Challenge mode, same single player game), South Park (Nothing really shown. Just that it was a South Park game), Uno Rush, Original Banjo Kazooie, Original Star Ocean, Primetime = Game shows like 1 vs 100

Netflix: Exclusive to Xbox 360. Netflix subscribers will get the option of streaming movies to their Xbox 360 for no additional fee. May be shared with people in your Live Party (See Xbox Dashboard Face Lift). Doubles the number of Xbox Live content pieces available.

Scene-It Box Office Smash: Sequel to succesful Scene-It game for 360. This time with Online play and downloadable content to expand the game with. The way it should have been done to begin with. Uses Avatars.

You’re in the Movies: Weird Xbox Vision Camera game. Act out scenes based on the mini-game’s criteria. Ala – Swat at bugs as they appear on your screen. Then when you and your friends get through a game, it takes those recorded scenes and makes them into a cheesy B-movie that had nothing to do with your mini-games. Hillarity ensues.

Banjo Kazooie/Viva Pinata: Showed a couple trailers. Still looks nice. Viva Pinata allows you to scan cards to bring in new Pinatas via the Xbox Vision camera.

Guitar Hero World Tour: REM track pack exclusive to the 360. Eagles is exclusive to Guitar Hero. Metallica is releasing some of their new songs on GHWT and GH3.

Lips: Microsoft’s answer to Playstation’s Singstar. Looks like mostly pop/hip hop. Duffy performed live, and didn’t seem to be able to follow her own song in the game. Mics pulsate with light, and are motion sensitive for bonus points when you dance. Also, you can hook up your MP3 players to sing along to "any song in your collection".

Rock Band 2: In addition to the previously announced backwards compatible DLC for RB2, the songs from the original game’s disc will ALSO be backwards compatible. So you can copy the game’s songs to your hard drive, and play them from there. Also, the official track list is out now. And apparently there will be a 20-song pack available for download for free at the game release. Supposedly songs that wouldn’t fit on the game. 104 or so songs total. Also, AC/DC is exclusive to Rock Band.

Last Remnant: Dated for November 20th, worldwide.

Final Fantasy XIII: Coming to Xbox 360 (In America only, perhaps) on the game’s release date. This is in addition to the PS3, not instead of.

Sorry if I missed anything. A /LOT/ happened today.

Read More for live updates.

1:42pm – XBLA gets exclusive Fallout 3 DLC. That’s pretty big.

1:46pm – Resident Evil 5 features online co-op. Could be cool. Looks a bit rough to me.

1:47pm – March 13th (Friday), 2009 Resident Evil 5 release date.

1:50pm – Epic. Fable 2 starts with you being crapped on by a bird. Online co-op confirmed. You can bring in any friend by walking up to glowing orbs in the game, and inviting the orbs. A bizarre. October release date.

1:55pm – Gears of War 2 trailer looks pretty awesome. And BTW, Cliffy B has the best name in the history of names.

2:01pm – You can ride a Brumak? Interesting. November 7th release date. No 4 player co-op (Stick with 2 players), but there is a 5 player co-op mode that involves taking on wave after wave of enemies.

2:04pm – Sweet. Took them 30 minutes to get to the circle jerk portion of the presentation. That’s an improvement. G4 claims a big announcement is coming at 2:08pm

2:07pm – NBC Universal is a new partner for content. Is that the big announcement? God I hope not.

2:09pm – Xbox Live guy is on now. We’ve had rumors of some big XBL news. Will we get some here?

2:10pm – Xbox 360 will be completely reinvented through software. Oh dear God. Avatars. Gag me. Still. This is huge news, for better or worse. The dashboard interface will completely change this year.

2:13pm – Your avatars will have cool clothes. I see ridiculous DLC for clothing.

2:17pm – 1 vs 100 … oh, yay. /sarcasm

2:19pm – Geometry Wars 2. Pretty cool looking.

2:21pm – Portal: Still Alive, exclusive to XBLA. Hell yeah.

2:23pm – SWEET! Netflix teaming with XBL. At no additional cost, you get to watch your streaming videos on XBL. AND, you can share you movies with your live party!

2:26pm – Banjo Kazooie trailer. Woo hoo. That game looks so fun. And viva Pinata 2

2:29pm – Original Banjo Kazooie on XBLA. And more Scene-It. Arg! I can’t keep up. Scene-It will have DLC this time. And play on live. The original had neither.

2:33pm – Some cheesy movie making game starring the vision camera. Weird.

2:42pm – Guitar Hero World Tour has an exclusive REM pack for the 360. Plus, the Eagles and someone else is exclusive to the Guitar Hero franchise.

2:44pm – Long rumored singing game called "Lips" is confirmed. Sing along to any song in your collection.

2:45pm – Duffy, singer of Mercy is singing Mercy, on Lips. Very bizarre. She keeps singing it different than the game has it :P

2:46pm – Now onto Rock Band 2. Talking about it’s limited exclusivity. This is a really long Press Conference.

2:53pm – Rock Band 2 will support Rock Band 1’s disc content! Sweet!

2:55pm – Square Enix president on stage now…Showed all the games we knew about.

3:00pm – Square president comes BACK on stage for a big announcement….Final Fantasy XIII!

3:06pm – That’s it folks. I have to say….best Microsoft Conference I can remember. HUGE stuff announced. Not all of it great, but all of it was huge.

*EDIT* Keep Reading for new images!

Mock-ups from the design team in response to questions about themes and stuff:

A majority of the week’s events will happen on Monday and Tuesday, as the biggest surprises of the convention generally happen amongst the formal stage presentations (And even then, the majority of the news will likely come from the console makers’ shows).

As such, in order to allow for a majority of the news from the show to take place before we record (You know, so we can actually discuss it), we are going to have to hold off on the E3 Discussion episode. We apoligize to anyone that would’ve been available on the original day, but will now miss the show. However, it’s just about the only way of doing it properly.

The E3 Discussion episode of GeekiNput will take place on Wednesday, July 16th at 8pm EST/5pm PST. The remaining GeekiNput shows will not be effected by this change of schedule, and will continue to record on Mondays.

We hope everyone understands and can still make it.