July 17^th, 2008 (7:33am) - Microsoft was the first of the three major companies to hold their press conference. They announced a few things we learned about from the Intellisponse leak, and a few surprises as well.

The biggest surprise of the show came at the end, when Final Fantasy XIII was revealed to be coming to the 360. This announcement came after footage was shown for three other 360 RPGS, The Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery and Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope.

Microsoft confirmed a few of the Intellisponse leaks. First they announced Lips, a karaoke game that allows users to sing to any song they’d like. Secondly they announced that Rare has been developing Avatars, which are similar to Nintendo’s Mii’s, though they are more customizable.

The Avatars will compliment the launch of the new 360 dashboard, which Microsoft claims will allow easier access to the content gamers find important. They will also be used in several games Microsoft is launcing under its new Primetime label, such as 1 vs. 100, Scene It: Box Office Smash and Uno Rush.

The company also announced You’re In The Movies, a game that makes use of the Xbox Live Vision Camera. Gamers will film themselves performing scenes and other minigames and use the footage to create movies.

The Xbox Live Arcade will be seeing several new releases, such as Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, Galaga Legions (a true sequel to arcade classic Galaga), a port of Banjo-Kazooie and Portal: Still Alive, which is a re-release of Portal but with additoinal levels.

Release dates were revealed for several games. Gears of War 2 will be coming out November 7. Fable 2 is "done" according to the company and will come out in October. Resident Evil 5 will be coming out March 13, 2009. Infinite Undiscovery has been slated for a September 2 launch.

It was revealed that Rock Band 2 will be coming to the 360 with a limited exclusivity, though it is heavily believed the game will be hitting all other systems before Christmas. It was also announced that Metallica will be releasing their new album, Death Magnetic, for download through Guitar Hero III and Guitar Hero World Tour.

It was also announced that Fallout 3 will have substantial extra content for the 360 and Games For Windows release.