Tech & Biz

Day one of E3 2008 - Microsoft's Conference

by Rob Walker | July 14, 2008 at 01:06 pm

226 views | 5 Recommendations | 1 comment

For those (like me) who are big gaming nerds, E3 started today. While E3 has suffered a lot of controversy in the last few years (closed registrations, no outside press unaffiliated with G4, etc.) it still remains fountain of information for up and coming games.

Today, the big rumbling was for the Microsoft conference, which saw new videos for Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5 (co-op gameplay!) and Fable 2 (also co-op gameplay!). Most of these games are finished - or nearly finished, and will be out in Fall 2008.

Other noteworthy titles are Gears of War 2 (a lot of sequels this year)

Microsoft also announced their numbers for downloadable content over Xbox Live - Over $1 billion on over half a billion pieces of content. Over a 1/3 of those are from TV and Movie sales.

Also of note is a deal with Netflix that will allow instant watching of movies and TV shows if you have an Xbox gold account. That's actually pretty impressive.

Oh, and one last thing - Final Fantasy XIII is coming to North America and Europe on the same day it hits in Asia - a first for the series.

I'll be updating more throughout the week as we get more news from E3!

10:34 -- Phil: "We'll unveil a brand new experience...introduce new games." Let's hope there's some exciting stuff not leaked. "Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5, Fable 2, and Gears of War 2" all going to be shown. Sequel-mania. "Intense games and not for the faint of heart."

Microsoft is about to get E3 2008 started with its media briefing. We're in the makeshift auditorium that they've set up here in the Los Angeles Convention Center's West Hall, ready to go. We'll be bringing you photos and live updates as soon as the event starts.
I'll drop the big announcements up here as they happen, with minute-by=minute updates below.

- "Extensive" downloadable content for Fallout 3, exclusive to Xbox 360 and Windows.

- NBC, Universal to add movie/TV content to Xbox Live Marketplace.

- Fable 2 in October, Gears of War in November... but Resident Evil 5 delayed to 2009.