So... Is this it? Or is the event still going on? I was looking forward to Reach and Fable III gameplay :D

awesome box art

it really doesn't make sense for Microsoft to show everything now because you still have E3 to worry about.

Dang, they're coming out guns blazing :D

@ Red_Dragon: I imagine more gameplay at E3 and a huge focus on Natal. So "get the shotguns out now, and finish them off at E3" is my guess for their strategy.

Should be nice to see how the other companies are going to react. It's getting interesting already, this early in the year :p

Nintendo is having a media event later on this month. My speculation is that they get some announcements out now and I think E# we might see new Nintendo hardware.

Actually majority of those games will be out before E3.

So i think MS have done this event to keep people informed about it being a busy next few months.

Microsoft have a policy not to talk about games that are years away. So at E3 they will obviously announce new games for the rest of the year and into the start of 2011.

Cool info on Fable 3.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/02/eyes-on-fable-iii-reaches-out-and-touches-someone/#ixzz0fGmHRWBp

Microsoft game designer Peter Molyneux took the veil off his latest role-playing game Fable III at the X10 event in San Francisco on Thursday. He showed an early build of the game that introduces a few new mechanics that are aimed, as is the developer’s wont, at enhancing the emotional connection that players feel with the game’s characters. In Fable II, you got an adorable, loyal dog. In Fable III, you can bond with other characters by touching them.

“It narrows the emotional boundary,” Molyneux said. For good or for evil.

(We were not allowed to take photos of the game, and Microsoft did not distribute any screenshots.)

In the first example, the main character — the son of the hero from the last game — was wandering around town looking for his young daughter. When he finds her, the context-sensitive “touch” action (controlled by one of the Xbox 360’s trigger buttons) lets him pick her up and toss her playfully into the air. As they walk home, the “touch” button lets him hold her hand.

But it’s not all fun and games. If you’re playing an evil character, you can touch a beggar to grab him by the hand and pull them to a factory, then sell him into slavery.

In the game world, which Molyneux said is modeled on Victorian, industrial revolution England, you can collect followers, then attempt to overthrow the king and become king yourself. If one of your subjects objects to your behavior, you can toss him in the dungeon or take him to your treasure room and give him some gold, all using the “touch” command, he said.

The other major feature of the game that Molyneux showed was “morphing.” Your characters’ weapons will change their physical appearance and attributes as you use them, and depending on how you use them. “If you kill innocents, it will drip blood; if you use it to protect people it will glow,” he said. Weapons will never get worse, just better.

The main character was also growing a pair of ethereal wings, like an aura around him, and these too change their appearance based on the choices you make.

In a video interview earlier this month, Molyneux said players would be “pissed” to hear about one of Fable III’s features. What’s the scoop? There’s no health bar, he said. In fact, there’s no heads-up display elements on the screen at all.

“Look at the screen!” Molyneux gushed, gesturing at the monitor like Vanna White. “It’s completely clean! Why do we need the fucking health bar?”

Instead of having a bar to show the player’s remaining health, Fable III will take cues from action games, not RPGs, and have environmental graphic changes that show that you’re close to death.

What, I asked, about other such menus and gauges?

“The 2-D parts of Fable 1 and Fable 2 were rubbish,” he responded. “That’s why people didn’t change their clothes, or change their weapons.” In Fable 3, he said, he’s looking to make that character-customization busywork “part of the game.”

“Which, I just realized, I’m not supposed to talk about,” he concluded.

Wouldn’t be a Peter Molyneux presentation without that.