Xbox @ E3 2012 Live Blog: Halo 4, Splinter Cell Blacklist, new 360 functionality

Join us for the first keynote of E3 2012, Microsoft's "Xbox @ E3 2012" event. If you're looking for the stream, you can check it out at e3companion. Neo staffer Lydia Sung is at the event live, you can follow her Twitter account @RabidChinaGirl. She has pictures too!

11:02 - That's the end of the conference! Thanks for watching everyone! Come back around 1PM for our coverage of the EA press conference! Should be a blast.

10:50 - Call of Duty: Black Ops 2! "We built computers, robots, unmanned armies, but no one asked... what happens when the enemies steal the keys." Mason is taking Madam president to safety. "This is what Menendez planned all along." In-game trailer showing hundreds of unmanned drones in the sky, bombing everything. It's an invasion from our own army.

Car crashes, Mason gets out slowly, gets on a mounted turret and is firing at the drones. Hard to tell what's player-controlled and what's cinematic. Very futuristic. Jet flies down and hovers over Mason. Player gets to choose between sniping and covering NPS or going into direct combat. Sniper rifle sees through walls, can charge up and fire thru said walls. He's blowing up cars with single bullets -- it's Call of Duty after all. Game is kind of freezing up... not sure if NPCS aren't spawning... wait there the trigger goes.

Trailer is now skipping ahead... we see some of those fancy four propeller hover drones. We're in a shopping complex. Jet comes crashing into the parking lot.  Now a building comes crashing down right in front of Mason... dust fills the screen. The last jet pilot has landed, but is wounded... so naturally, you take her place! First time flyer Mason has taken over. He's protecting a convoy.  Wow, that jet can go fast. "The future is back... black." "Thanks everyone and have a great E3."

10:49 - Mattrick is back, thanking everyone for coming. "Start with the Nike+ Trainer, end with a movie or game." Microsoft really keying in on the complete experience today. Close with another blockbuster game... what is it!?

10:48 - Usher still dancing. Oh hey, now we have the game footage in the background. Usher's doing the same moves as the in-game characters! It's the future.

10:44 - Harmonix trailer... it's Dance Central 3! Usher says he worked with the team to create choreography for two songs. Usher singing on stage, dancing himself crazy. He yells "GET UP!" and the audience clicks on their phones. I thought they'd have Dance Central footage on-screen, but it's just Usher singing and dancing.

10:40 - South Park game! The crew is all in their DnD outfits. "Jews can't be saviors." New kid has moved in, he has a power the kids don't understand. Huge, epic battle. "Fight for the stick." You are the new kid. Butters throws a hammer at some crab people, Jesus has a machine gun. This game looks AMAZING. Tre Parker and Mat Stone come on stage.

They're making fun of Microsoft, nice. They want the game to look like an episode of South Park. Working with Obsidian to make that distinctive "crappy" look. "How do we go from Kyle's house to Cartman's house?" You are the new kid, trying to become the 5th of the crew of four -- trying to become cool. They have to go work on the game now.

10:38 - Alex Ruiz from the Xbox Live team. Wrecketear, how is this spelled? Alex is this year's over-actor. She has a lot to say to the in-game characters... and it's all scripted. It's like a 3D Angry Birds. All controls are thru Kinect, she uses her arms to control the different weapons. Launches on Xbox Live this summer. Alex freaking jumps off stage in fright.

10:32 - Resident Evil 6 now being shown... hey, look everyone! It's Leon! He looks like he has been thrashed. Lots of zombies, a helicopter firing at them. He's rolling on the ground, firing from crouched, stabbing zombies with his knife. Movement looks very fast paced. 10 zombies running up a stairwell, grenade takes them out. Leon chops off a zombie's head with an axe. He opens a door, can see into the city... abandoned cars everywhere... lots of zombies.

All of a sudden everything is exploding and Leon is running towards the camera through a maze of cars. Another helicopter comes out of nowhere and picks Leon and his lady partner up before the fire/zombies get them. Now this helicopter is crashing.. QTE helps him keep it afloat. The old pilot is now a combie, QTE kills him... another QTE to help the helicopter from crashing into a building. Finally the thing crashes.

Leon and his partner are now in a room with like... 200 zombies. End of trailer. "Not my lucky day.

10:28 - Phil is back! Talking about new, original properties. Next 3 titles are all world premiers. First game is Ascend: New Gods from the makers of Toy Soldiers. It looks like a turn-based, chess like combat system.  Big monsters, lots of blood and stabbing, a castle getting crushed. Monster begins to "ascend" into a ray of red light. End.

Next game... "School of assassination" "Cloaking technology" "First cadet to break the four minute mile" "All this and it won't even run down her batteries." LocoCycle from Twisted Pixel.

Third game... and orb floating above shifting blocks and cylinders... the game is called Matter, made for Kinect, launches 2013.

10:23 - Crystal Dynamics guys coming out to show off Tomb Raider. Gameplay trailer on-screen. Lara is running with her bow, listening to a couple guys talk until she shoots one in the head with an arrow. The leftover dude has a machine gun, and he's blowing away barrels and all sorts of environmental objects. Mention of "The Enforcer," some sort of boss of the bad guys?

A couple of guys are cracking open a fuel tank, "Don't let it spill, that stuff is liquid gold." Lara still rocking her bow against all of these machine gun toting baddies. Now she has a shotgun too. She performs a close combat kill with an arrow. There's lots of QTE stuff going on in-between combat sequences. It's a lot like Uncharted except quite a bit faster paced.

Lara plummets down a waterfall, hard to tell how much is actually player controlled. She lands in an upside-down plane, the glass breaks, but she grabs a parachute before she falls. Now she's parachuting into a forest, again, hard to tell how much of her movement is player controlled vs. pre-rendered.

She seems very injured, the trailer ends with her overlooking a huge building and bridge. First DLC pack will be Xbox exclusive.

10:12 - Head of Xbox Live Mark Whitten talking about mobile devices. Talking about connectivity between your devices on the console. "Xbox SmartGlass" transforms the devices you know and love, and connects them to your TV and console.

Talking about watching a movie on his tablet, and when he gets home SmartGlass transfers the film to his television. Tablet recieves info on the movie after the transfer. Whitten uses Kinect to pull up a Game of Thrones episode. His phone and tablet are pulling up information on the show and episode as he's watching it on television.

How does this affect games? Let's see... Madden NFL plays on your tablet, including designing plays. This is just a tech demo, but he's using the tablet as a controller. Halo 4 example now, waypoint data streamed to your tablet for you to peruse. Xbox messages coming up on your tablet, "Joe wants to play single players."

Phones can work as remote controls with SmartGlass. IE is coming to Xbox this year. He's talking about how SmartGlass will revolutionize internet on your console. He brings up a browser, with a list of his favorite shows. He's showing a trailer for Prometheus that he pulled up from his browser. "This is the web tranformed for TV."

Using his phone as a mouse, he's able to browse Aston Martin's webpage fairly simply. Launching world-wide this fall. Talking about games on Windows 8 tablets now. Of course, SmartGlass will be in Windows 8 as well.

10:06 - One last announcement... about Kinect. The future of fitness, with Kinect, of course. "Train for your moment." Showing your frame and second countdowns, different measurements pertaining to health and such. Stefan Orlander from Nike!

"You can't improve what you can't measure." "If you have a body, you're an athlete." Nike+, Nike Fuel. Partnership with Xbox to bring Nike+ Kinect Training to your console.
Training methods of professional athletes. Phone reminders to remind you when to work out. Health evaluations monthly. Time for a trailer.

Lots of athletes, random numbers on screen. Not sure how this will play out in front of your console... here we go. Showing your "frame" exercising next to an in-game trainer. Basically like other exercise games.

10:05 - Xbox music coming to Xbox 360 and PC. Sneak peek -- your music, your way. Lots of people dancing. I assume this is going to be like iTunes, Microsoft style. Not the Zune store... Xbox Music brand change.

9:58 - Subject change, we're talking about entertainment now. Follow what you want to watch by genre this fall. "Xbox, bing comedies." Showing movie listings for the genres he's calling out. Also works by title, all via Kinect commands. Expanding voice search to 12 new countries. Kinect commands working in spanish language no problem.

Name dropping HBO Go and other media apps for the Xbox. Four new entertainment providers being announced -- Nickelodeon! Paramount movies. Machinima. Univision for spanish gamers.

Now sports. Wants Xbox to be home for all championships, all games. Brings up UFC, MLB.tv, and announcing sports expansion ... NBA is coming to Xbox. NBA gametime and League Pass. Hockey too? NHL coming to XBOX. NHL GameCenter. 40 games per week. ESPN and Xbox announcement? Live programming thru Watch ESPN on Xbox 360. ESPN, ESPN2 etc... all your favorite ESPN shows. All live, all in HD.

New trailer for Xbox sports. Kinect commands for sports, naturally. "Xbox, NHL, full-screen." "Xbox, Monday Night Football." Features like split screen. End of trailer!

9:56 - Racer trailer. "If you are not here by 10, you are not in." Cars goin fast! Lots of offroad action, huge open world it looks like. DUBSTEP. Was wondering how long it would take before the dubstep kicked in. 30minutes into the Microsoft conference. Lots of car wrecks going on now. This is Forza Horizon, and it looks good. October 23, 2012.

9:55 - Gears trailer is showing off Baird in cuffs, lots of badguys, but not much substance. Gears of War Judgment. End of trailer.

9:54 - Phil Spencer on stage now. Namedrops Halo and Fable, says Xbox is the place for the best games. New glimpse at an action racer... Most Wanted? "First, let's start ..." Gears of War trailer!

9:52 - New Fable trailer for ... The Journey? Kinect functionality being shown again. Guy is throwing fireballs and the like, other oddball spells all done with hand movements. Holiday 2012, yup it's Fable: The Journey.

9:47 - Head of EA Sports talking about Kinect on EA Sports. FIFA 13 promising freedom of attack with Kinect .  Down 1-0, with Kinect, act with precision to substitute players on the pitch. Never stopping play, never going to menu. He's changing formations, and calling players to make plays without button presses. Guy cusses, Kinect hears it and makes a player on-screen rage at the ref.

Madden NFL now, again with Kinect integration. Joe Montana coming on stage -- EA loves its celebs! Montana hoping this game makes him feel like he's back on the field. He's calling plays, hurry ups, and making pretty impressive moves. Throws an incomplete pass, how unlike him! There's a bit of screen lag, oddly enough, when he makes Kinect commands. He scores a touchdown with a hand-off play to the running back. Come on Joe, make the pass!

9:40 - New trailer on screen. Dude talking in Arabic, carrying an injured man in his arms. This is... Splinter Cell? Absolutely. The guy pulls out some QTE style executions, now he's beating the s*** out of this guy, asking for information. Title screen comes up. "Splinter Cell: Blacklist"

"Our story takes us to the Iraq/Iran border." The agent's missions is to take the war to the enemies. He has some very slick looking bullet-time style executions. He's now climbing a mountain face Assassin's Creed style. His name is Sam, but is it old Sam? Classic Splinter Cell move, enhanced by Kinect voice recognition. The guy talks in real life, the enemy reacts to his voice -- Sam pulls him off a ledge. Sam then shocks some water, electracuting some enemies in the water.

Sam clicks on some thermal vision, starts executing dudes with his slow-mo firing system, but is also interacting with the environment in a myriad of ways. Breaking down down doors, etc. The player uses Kinect to call down an airstrike.

Sam's using an under-door camera to identify targets in a room. He puts a bomb on the door, stunning enemies in the room and then caps them in bullet-time. Cinematic auto-starts, and asks about the "Blacklist." "If you're here mate, I'm already dead." His captive shoots himself. Trailer ends! Looks very cool.

Shipping Spring 2013, with single player, co-op and spy vs. spy.

9:38 - President of Interactive Entertainment Don Mattrick welcomes us to the conference. "Today, it's all about Xbox 360." No news on 720 today, folks! "Through the magic of Kinect." Hmm.

9:31 - Live action trailer for Halo 4 going on right now. Spaceship getting blown up. Things are looking grim for the USS Infinity (ships name). Zoom in on Master Chief, he sees this huge ship crashing onto this planet he's stuck on. Big globe uncloaks behind him, scans him, and flies off super fast. "Where's he heading?" "Same place we are."

We're seeing in-game footage now. The Covenant are back! Chief is in the jungle now, hearing sounds in the wilderness. "I don't think we're the only ones out here." Oh hey, look at that, grunts! They still die in one shot. "All ground forces are ordered to return to the Infinity immediately."

New monsters show up, big dog looking creatures. They are "defense AIs" according to Cortana. They explode into orange goo when Chief shoots them. "It's not organic." Chief picks up a gun one creature dropped. "I recognize this design, it's Forerunner." Chief using this gun to demolish the enemies now. They're able to teleport around, almost like StarCraft II Protoss.

Chief turns on a heat seaking kind of view, he's surrounded and gets clocked in the head. Back to CG trailer, Cortana is talking about her impending rampancy. She sounds very crazy, making crazy faces. "I have long dreamt of this day, Reclaimer," says a foreboding voice. Cut back to audience.

9:29 - We're about 30s out! Who is ready? I am ready. Gogogog.

9:26 - Ahh, that classic Halo 4 trailer from last year's E3 press conference. Oh Master Chief, why you always throwing yourself into space? Always in trouble, that guy.

9:25 - We're currently in pre-show with Major Nelson! Get ready, we're 5 minutes out.