Microsoft today gave their pre-E3 conference and of course we were present in the form of DoubleD who brought us all the goodies that was said.

Since the Xbox360 has been available for some time already, no specifics on the console were to be revealed, unlike with the other console giants, Nintendo and Sony, but that doesn't mean there wasn't much news. Not at all!

Microsoft started with showing off footage from Gears of War trailer and some CG of Emergence Day. CliffyB came by to show the audience around in Gears of War and then it was time for Peter Moore to jump on the stage.

After some sales figures and Xbox Live subscriptions blabla he gave some info on the expansion of Xbox Live Arcade. Midway, Namco and Konami are adding their arcade portfolio to the service and some of the titles will have of course High-def, leaderboards and multiplayer.

More expansion for Microsoft's Xbox Live service as Warner Music Group has signed upto deliver exclusive music content.

Then onto more new games for Xbox360 with trailers of: Lost Planet, Table Tennis, Brothers In Arms, Mass Effect, NHL 2K7, Viva Pinata, MotoGP '06, Battle for Middle-earth II, Sonic the Hedgehog, World Series of Poker, Saint's Row (eek framerate, THQ), WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2007, Stranglehold, Enchanted Arms, Madden 07, F.E.A.R., Test Drive Unlimited, NCAA Football 07, Dead Rising, DDR Universe, Prey, Superman Returns, NBA 2K7, Crackdown, Ninety-Nine Nights and Too Human

Then we get to some more interesting stuff:
- Formal announcement of Fable 2
- Formal announcement of Forza Motorsport 2

Also some new peripherals have been announced: Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel with force feedback, a new wireless headset and an Xbox Live Vision Camera.

Final Fantasy creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, was also present to promote Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon.

Then some more games passed the list including Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, Splinter Cell: Double Agent after which Viva Pinata gets dissected including the way you can play and trade over Xbox Live.

Then some more new stuff for Xbox Live gets announced: high defenition TV content including music videos, movie trailers, and exclusive content from Paramount, Touchstone, Disney, Epic Records, Lionsgate and Fox

Again an interesting announcement was made: Grand Theft Auto IV will be coming to XBox360 October 16th 2007 in North America and October 19th 2007 Europe. Yep, Peter Moore got himself another tattoo on his arm.

To promote Games for Windows and Windows Vista, Microsoft sent in the big guns in the form of Bill Gates himself. Also some games get shown to show off the capacity of DirectX10: Crysis, Age of Conan and Flight Sim X. Shadowrun and Alan Wake also get a piece of the attention cake

Gates talks about how Microsoft is into building platforms and this will also include mobiles and how all their platforms will start to act together. Cross-platform gaming is not an illusion with Live Anywhere that will no longer be Xbox exclusive but will also be featured for PC games (windows vista) and mobiles (windows mobile)

And of course the best was kept for last:
- Official announcement of Halo 3 and if you want to know what they showed the audience yourself, I suggest you download the trailer we've got stored locally:

In other news: