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20:52 -- Garnett: And that's all folks. Schappert has said thank you and good bye. We have a few more pics coming for you in just a sec.
20:51 -- Garnett: So, all-new campaign, all-new hero. Almost sounds more like Halo 3.5.
20:50 -- Garnett: HALO 3 RECON. Fall 2009. So it's not technically the Chief, but rather an ODST Marine. Will also include new multiplayer maps.
20:49 -- Garnett: Massive devastation of the city. And from a pod emerges -- the Chief.
20:48 -- Garnett: Second half of the trailer coming on screen now.
20:47 -- Garnett: On Halo 3: "We aren't quite done yet."
20:46 -- Garnett: After a brief cinematic we've moved into the demo. Pretty standard stuff right up to now, but he just teased the third faction: the Flood. Looks like (as you might expect) it will share a lot in common with the Zergs in StarCraft.
20:40 -- Garnett: Crossing my fingers, they're going to talk about what the future holds for Halo franchise games. Graeme Devine is up now to show off the campaing mode of Halo Wars.
20:39 -- Garnett: New Xbox Live Experience launches November 19 globally.
20:37 -- Garnett: For those concerned about themes, old ones will still work, they become a sort of stage backdrop on the different screens. New themes include 3D elements.
20:35 -- Garnett: Stealth announcement of Meteos Wars coming to Live while showing off the different panels that now take the place of the old blades.
20:34 -- Garnett: After fooling around in the menus to show their depth -- each area typically offers two to three pages of pieces with nine items on each -- he's used a photo mode to make his gamer pic from a headshot of the avatar.
20:32 -- Garnett: He's starting naturally with creating an avatar and showing off how much room for customization it offers.
20:31 -- Garnett: Schappert is now moving on to talk about Live. He's started by revealing that they are now up to 14 million Live users. The fall Live release is "done" and he's going to demo the real, final version.
20:30 -- Garnett: That's a pretty strong lineup of classics.
20:26 -- Garnett: New arcade games are coming to Live arcade: Space Invaders Extreme. Arkanoid Live, with coop and versus modes
20:25 -- Garnett: Note that the word "exclusive" has NOT been used, but I think you definitely can consider it another strong move for 360 to secure that they get these titles that formerly were key PlayStation exclusives.
20:23 -- Garnett: Yeah, you heard me correctly, Tekken 6, Xbox 360, fall 2009.
20:22 -- Garnett: Ninety-Nine Nights 2 is coming exclusively to 360, and now there's another surprise announcement.
20:21 -- Garnett: Now they're showing RE5 with far more than we've seen before. No, it's not all in a dusty village. They're fighting a boss who reminds me a lot of the Tyrant from 3 n some sort of secret lab. The trailer ended with a shot of Jill Valentine's tombstone! Check out the new RE5 trailer for yourself right here.
20:19 -- Garnett:When you get to see the video check out the weapon and spell effects during battle. The world map parts, particularly when he's running into the city, had an undeniable Final Fantasy feel to them.
20:15 -- Garnett: Just saw the first bits of in-game and it looks good. Game will debut 2/19 in Japan; 3/3 in North America.
20:13 -- Garnett: Oh shit, the Star Ocean CG is hot.
20:12 -- Garnett: Yay, About to show the Star Ocean trailer!!!
20:10 -- Garnett: The flow of this morning's keynotes is really quite remarkable. We started with a dissection of the changing of the guard in games. The panel spoke to how thinking globally presents a number of challenges ranging far beyond simply the development to areas such as srt design and marketing. And now Schappert is making what amounts to a sales pitch for the 360 as a new place for Japanese devs to move forward
20:07 -- Garnett: And now John Schappert has taken the stage promoting that Last Remnant makes its exclusive premier on 360 and is indicative of the 360 development emphasis here.
20:06 -- Garnett: And we're back. This intermission is much more exciting with a trailer for Last Remnant being shown.
19:25 -- Garnett: Wrapping up the keynote, I found it an interesting sort of admission in public of things we've all been saying for some time, and it shouldn't be underestimated how big a deal that is for the Japanese. At the same time, based on the opening remarks, I feel like it needed to be a stronger call to arms for the development community here.
19:21 -- Sam: Just FYI, execs from Square Enix, Capcom, and Namco Bandai are on stage talking about the games market. It's mainly stuff that you'd expect -- they're talking about whether the current financial market problems will affect gaming (they think games are pretty immune to it, thankfully) and how to reach a wider, global audience. Nothing really surprising. This'll probably go on for another 15 or 20 minutes, I'd imagine, so you may want to take a break and go to the bathroom or something. Garnett just did.
19:09 -- Garnett: Wada has concluded and there's going to be a short break before a panel discussion. We'll be back in a bit with more.
19:07 -- Garnett: He's moved on to talking some about how the society would have to change. Honestly, I'm not sure how realistic it is to expect the business climate of Japan to suddenly start supporting people moving fluildly between jobs and companies. Cultural shifts such as that take a long time to happen, and occur far more gradually -- such as this very talk. Each of these steps will start to help them make those changes.
19:04 -- Garnett: I wonder if maybe they could engineer some high tech invitro game development. They must have some awesome fertility clinics here, no?
19:03 -- Garnett: There's evidently a crisis here and Japan is no longer "fertile" for game development. The Japanese will have to change their lifestyles to repair it.
19:02 -- Sam: You can make your own caption for this one, since we have no idea what the hell this slide means.
19:00 -- Garnett: No wonder they don't have a GDC equivalent; it would last for weeks at this rate.
18:59 -- Garnett: This just in, games take a number of specialized professionals to create and you have to build a network of these people to do that. HOW DOES IT TAKE THIS LONG TO SAY THAT?
18:56 -- Garnett: But, we do have our first laser pointer sighting, and that's something. I mean, it was at least fun to imagine that like Spicoli was sitting somewhere in back just screwing with him.
18:55 -- Sam: "The important points are -- sometimes it goes through different layers, knowledge foundation helps there. there are several of them. sometimes the foundation is valid that way. The community is formed here. Exchanged between several industries, the hub can be formed. Using similar words, totally different things are meant. so we have to be aware of that in order to manage. your own achievement is based on somebody else's achievement, so you have to be original. You have to start from the ground up. That spirit is great. If you say so you become isolated. I try to use the term engineer in our company." SEE WHAT I MEAN? You try sitting through 20 minutes of this.
18:52 -- Sam: He's talking about networks and how they relate to game design -- honestly, there's a ton getting lost in translation because none of this makes any sense. We'll just let you know when he says anything that you're going to care about.
18:50 -- Sam: Show us the goddamn Star Ocean trailer already! Where's Luke? I want to see him come on stage when Microsoft gets on.
18:49 -- Sam: Wada just told us that the Japanese development scene has been a very closed world. Gosh, tell us something we didn't know.
18:48 -- Sam: He's saying that stuff like DICE, GDC, and those conventions that unite the dev commmunity in the U.S. has helped build that community in a way that Japan has not had.
18:45 -- Sam: This is just depressing.
18:44 -- Garnett: Wada is speaking to how the rise of third-party development helped facilitate the shift from Japan being the "hub" of videogaming to the western world, because it was no longer just the big hardware makers.
18:43 -- Garnett: I feel like I'm at a survey of Videogame History class at a game school.
18:41 -- Garnett: We've moved on to some sort of Dr. Obvious stuff chronicling how videogaming 20 years ago was a Japanese-dominated space but that has changed.
18:38 -- Garnett: Wada is now saying that despite the high cost of modern game development, Japanese development is the most financially stable in the world.
18:36 -- Garnett: Ugh, Wada just prefaced his comments by describing them as "abstract" and probably difficult to translate into anything meaningful. Sounds a lot like the state of Japanese game development he intends to talk about.
18:35 -- Garnett: Wada has come on stage to discuss what the world wants from the Japanese game development industry.
Sam: He's basically talking about what's wrong with their development.
18:33 -- Garnett: Yay, they've dimmed the lights and turned on the hip trax. Let's get it started in here.
18:31 -- Garnett: The announcement was finally made to please take your seats as the presentation will be beginning. They're playing some wack Enya easy listening in the back ground
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