While the annual Electronics Entertainment Expo doesn't officially kick off until today, things got underway last night in Santa Monica, California.

You may have heard that this year's event is going to be a very different affair from what has come before. Gone is the massive spectacle inside the Los Angeles Convention Center. No more super-sized light and sound shows at the various vendors' booths, no more "booth babes." Instead, E3 is spread out across four different Santa Monica hotels - as well as several other locations around Los Angeles where press conferences are to be held.

At a pre-event gathering, it was described as "an event in transition."

So, it only seemed appropriate that Microsoft kicked off this year's conference at a high school amphitheater.

There's something ironic about Microsoft staging their press event at Santa Monica High School. With the format for this year's event designed to cut down on the number of rabid gamers who would inevitably sneak their way into the convention center, what better way to keep prying teenage eyes away from what you're eventually going to be marketing to them in the Fall than by setting up at the one place they wouldn't be caught dead near in the middle of July?

As for the highlights:

Microsoft saved XBOX 360's most hotly anticipated game of the Fall, "Halo 3," for the end of the event. After more than 90 minutes of eye-popping, bowel-rattling game demos displayed on their massive multimedia stage set, the "Halo 3" trailer fell kind of flat.

While there are no plans for a price cut, there are plenty of things for XBOX 360 users to be excited about.

Microsoft is partnering with Disney to bring the studio's massive library of films to the XBOX Live Marketplace. The company has moved aggressively in the area of video-on-demand and adding Disney's movie's and shows available to their users, Microsoft says they expect to expand their online community to 10-million members by this time next year.


New Orleans Saints star running-back Reggie Bush helped show off this year's edition of EA's "Madden." And while Bush certainly dazzles on the XBOX controls nearly as much as he does on field, it's hard to tell just how much EA can improve on their game this year after making the jump to next-gen last year.

Other trailers and demos that caught my eye for XBOX 360 included:

Activision's "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare"
Bizzarre's "Project Gotham Racing 4"
Mistwalker's "Lost Odyssey"
Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed"

Now, we move on to one-on-one meetings with various game developers where they'll try to convince me that theirs are the games that will be THE game to have this holiday season.

I'll be blogging my impressions and get deeper into some of the game-play details once I get a chance to have a hands-on demo.