Thats why all they have to do is just make games from the inside.

The anticipation makes your hair stand on end doesn't it?

I'm just waiting to have my outstanding questions answered about the XBO, it would be nice if I could discuss those answers without having some moron spreading FUD on some ill conceived crusade.  I do enjoy the E3 conferences, not so much the fact it brings every troll out of the woodwork.  We shall see, I think the prediction that there will be a large number of people downplaying anything and everything in their conference is a given.

If MS has a good show that would be the first gamer focused show since 2008, when they took exclusivity of Tekken and Final Fantasy from Sony. I remember it like yesterday when I first joined this site. The whole site blew up and I was more on the 360 side back then. T'was so funny.  This is what people expect from E3 because of MS performance for the past four years. Hopefully it changes though, because I tried to keep an open mind and lower my expectations for the Xbone reveal and was disappointed even more. Games better be godly...one billion worth of games.

I'd say it's a bit more than just a minor speed difference from W7. Without a SSD drive Windows 8 boots up in about 15-20 seconds vs. about 1 minute plus for Windows 7. From my experience everything else loads quicker too. 

Metro UI isn't useless either. You generally don't need it most of the time but there are some good apps (especially the default ones). Metro IE10 isn't really that good (except on touch devices). But that's why you just download Chrome for the computer. As far as the Windows Store being a wasteland, well, that really isn't the case. It still is missing quite a few bigger apps (which is offset by the default apps that cover just about every base) but it's gaining apps at a much higher rate than iOS or Android were when they were young and it's already got quite a large library of apps.

Overall it combines the desktop convenience with convenient apps and with the addition of Windows Blue 8.1 (or whatever it's called) it should be fixing a few of the complaints that people have been having with the OS; which is most notably, the lack of a start button on the desktop screen.

Is it confirmed to be for just one year?

I don't think that number is exclusive to the games. It's probably split between (mostly) the games, advertising, and opening studios. Not to mention there have been rumors of a lot of canceled games. That number may also include money that was paid to third party developers for timed exclusives/DLC.

$1 billion for 1 year seems like too much. Its probably for the next 2 years and includes Halo 5's 100 million+ budget.

I've had a strong feeling MS would reveal at least one major game changer for the new Xbox. I was surprised by the lack of this game changer at the reveal, but I'm still convinced its coming.

I'm personally a ps3 guy, but I feel you can't ignore the money and size of MS. It would be very hard for me to believe that MS won't release a good machine surrounded by smart decisions (the 360 release was extremely sloppy, but they're gaming division is much more developed now). I still don't think it will interest me, thought, just as the 360 hasn't interested me thus far other than Gears. Only time will tell.

If MS does knock it out of the park, a lot of PS guys on this site are gonna be eating a record amount of crow. The brutality towards the XBO has been bad, even worse than how Nintendo fans on this site ripped the Vita apart before its release. Makes me feel bad for the MS/Xbox fans:( You may just have the last laugh, though - deservingly.

I agree. The 1B$ likely includes a lot of costs that gamers and the public wouldn't immediately associate with the statement "we are investing heavily in games".

That is a possibility as well. I just took what I could from the article. It stated the quote as "Lets Kill Sony at E3," or something like that. The "Let's kill them at E3" is also more of a rally cry or something you say to pump people up. There does not seem to be any arrogance in that type of statement. If it was more along the lines of "We will" then it would be different.