E3 2012: Microsoft E3 Presentation Live Blog

Ooh boy! 2:30am, what a wonderful time to be alive! Welcome to GameArena's live-blog of the Microsoft E3 presentation, where we'll tell you what is happening as it is happening. Ain't science grand? What are we expecting this year? Microsoft have already said they won't be revealing the next generation of the Xbox, so that's out. Windows 8 hit Release Preview recently, so we're probably going to see something about that though and we've also heard of something called 'smart glass' which is probably not the fancy name for a sippy cup it sounds like. Let's begin!

EDIT: I've added a wrap up at the bottom with some of my thoughts on the presentation.

2:31am - We are kicking off with a live action sequence for Halo 4. It's about a ship blowing up or something.

2:33am - Ooh now it's gameplay. I'm going to have to pretend to be excited I guess. He just shot the same 4 enemies I saw him shoot in the first Halo game.

2:35am - Ooh now there are new enemies I think. A bunch of bugs, then a glowing skull man and a drone. He has a fancy new gun now! These new guns do look kind of cool.

2:37am - Cortana gets angry about something, everybody goes nuts.

2:38am - Ok now Don Mattrick is up looking like a cross between Luke Wilson and Martin Short.

2:40am - 'There never has been a better time to own an Xbox' he says weirdly, after explaining that they were bringing the 'Xbox experience' to phones, tablets and PCs.

2:41am - Oh now we're seeing Splinter Cell: Blacklist. We're back in the desert. Sigh.

2:42am - 'Killing in motion' is basically execute while you are running - run at a bunch of guys and shoot them all in the face somehow. We also see Kinect voice recognition being used to alert a guard.

2:45am - Sam calls down an optical strike of some sort, with explosives. Then he busts into a room and shoots a guy in the face. We're going to see it in Autumn 2013.

2:47am - Andrew Wilson is the king of EA Sports. FIFA and Madden are both 'Better With Kinect' They are showing FIFA now, the ref gets upset when you swear now. Cool?

2:49am - For Madden they have Joe Montana up. I still don't know what 'set hut?' means.

2:51am - You can shout things I don't understand at your Xbox just like a real quarterback.

2:52am - Ugh. Fable: The Journey.

2:54am - Bahaha Phil Spencer just said only good games are on the Xbox.

2:55am - new Gears of War trailer. This is no doubt the prequel. Yep, Gears of War Judgement, starring a smug **** with blonde hair and goggles.

2:56am - New open world Forza - Horizon. Oh boy yes! Dubstep! I was getting the shakes there, I hadn't heard dubstep in a trailer for too long.

2:57am - Yusuf... I missed his last name. He's a marketing man. He's talking about Bing, which is apparently popular. You can now sort via genre in a whole bunch of crap which will mean nothing in Australia! Ooh you can use Hulu Plus! Not here you can't.

2:59am - Voice search now in Mexican! Is Spanish the same as Mexican? I always thought it was. Anyway, he is blathering on about stupid crap nobody should care about BECAUSE THE XBOX 360 IS A GOD DAMNED GAME CONSOLE NOT A CRAPPY VERSION OF PLEX.

3:02am - Sports! Sports-Center! Sports-Show! Sports Man! Sports-Sports! Let's look at sports!

3:04am - The world's biggest douchebags watch sports.

3:05am - Oh boy music! That's what I want to know about Yusuf. You can watch music on the Xbox!

3:07am - Kinect! We're back to Kinect! I never thought I'd be excited for Kinect! I'm sorry Kinect let's never fight again!

3:09am - Ok so now Nike+ is coming to Kinect to be boring WHATEVER

3:11am - Kinect Training is about high fives!

3:12am - Mark Whitman. I have no idea who this is. Mark Whitman is going to tell us about Xbox SmartGlass

3:13am - Xbox SmartGlass lets you send your movie from your phone/tablet to your TV. That's cool.

3:14am - You can see a map of where the show is taking place, as he shows with Game of Thrones. Which is kind of cool, if pointless.

3:15am - SmartGlass + Games looks cool, you can control Madden plays via your tablet and... unlock dumb **** in Halo. Maybe I will finally get my own dream experience - a Bethesda RPG with a decent UI!

3:18am - Bahahaha Internet Explorer. People just cheered for Internet Explorer.

3:19am - Now with SmartGlass you can look at cars on the internet!

3:21am - Smart Glass and Internet Explorer will be launching in Spring. I'm excited for the former at least. Full support for iOS and Android as well as Windows Phone.

3:23am - Tomb Raider. She has a bow and arrow. I'm mostly just surprised to see a game again.

3:24am - There is a hell of a lot of shooting going on here unfortunately.

3:25am - Where the hell are the dinosaurs.

3:27am - Tomb Raider or Uncharted: Lady Edition as it is also known will put its DLC on the Xbox 360 first.

3:28am - World Premiere trailers! Oh boy! Signal Studios - makers of Toy Soldiers - are making a game about stabbing. It has asynchronous multiplayer apparently. Called Ascend, it also has some SotC giant climbing. Popular this year.

3:30am - Next up is Twisted Pixel's new game - LocoCycle, about an assassination bike or something?

3:32am - The last one was about a metal sphere or something? Called Matter, something about Gore Verbinski?

3:33am - Resident Evil 6! Whoever is playing this apparently sucks at video games, he keeps popping them in the chest.

3:35am - The are running away from a giant continual explosion? What?

3:37am - RE6 has an awfully large amount of QTEs...

3:39am - Wreckateer looks like a Kinect based version of Angry Birds. Launches this Winter.

3:40am - The new South Park RPG - The Stick of Truth. Jews can't be saviours, remember? Awesome.

3:41am - Trey Parker and Matt Stone are on. They just made fun of the SmartGlass presentation.

3:43am - Oh I knew my smile wouldn't last. Dance Central 3 is up now. Usher is talking. Freaking Usher. UGH.

3:45am - Jesus Usher is actually there. God damn it. Well while he is singing is dumb song I will at least I can go to the bathroom.

3:48am - Ok I'm back. He just finished singing. Thank goodness.

3:50am - Don Mattrick is back, making the world's worst puns. He said something about 'ushering in' and then mugged at the audience, who either didn't care for it or didn't get it. Hilarious.

3:51am - Black Ops 2! Who is not excited about this? Apart from me.

3:53am - Heaps of explosions and robots and a lady president? They keep calling her The President, I thought they had codenames or something like Thunderbolt.

3:55am - we cut to another section, where they are fighting in shops or something. I can't pretend to care.

3:57am - Your team mates are a lady, a gruff guy and a helicopter robot!

3:59am - A building fell down. Activision really loved that nuke bit in COD4.

4:01am - This thing will never end. They are in a jet now though, which is cool.

4:02am - Oh, it ended. As did the Xbox Conference itself. Well that was worth getting up at 2 in the morning for.

To wrap up, what did we learn? I learned that the glowing skull man and the drone were the 'forerunners' and I'm sure Halo fans were either amused or infuriated at my apathy. Sorry guys. The Kinect seems to be moving away from its body tracking to a voice recognition system - which is 1000% more useful than shoehorning dumb movement gimmicks into games. That doesn't mean people won't be shoe-horning dumb movement gimmicks into games however. While I still have no idea what Joe Montana was shouting, I am actually excited for the next Madden game - especially if it has SmartGlass integration. I might do something other than 'pick Hail Mary or any random pass' when I play it.

And speaking of SmartGlass, I am seriously excited for that. Using a smartphone or tablet to control a device is not new - plenty of apps give you similar functions on Android and iOS (and Symbian, Nintendo DS and PSP to boot, if we count VNC) and neither is the airplay style functionality - but it is awesome to see a company bringing it to more than just their own devices. The only real problem is that we don't have netflix, we don't have HBO Go, we don't have Hulu Plus - so what good will it be outside of games? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.