Microsoft’s E3 Event Showcases Major Improvements

Microsoft’s E3 conference just ended, and the company dished out a lot of new information. First and foremost, they showed off new footage of Gears of War 2, Fable II, Fallout 3, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero On Tour, Resident Evil 5 and, in a much more surprising note, Final Fantasy XIII (!), which was unveiled at the end of the event.

Along with the major games, partners also showed off Geometry Wars 2, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Portal: Still Alive, Galaga Legion (a sequel to the famous arcade game), as well as others. Microsoft also announced their plans to include NBC, Universal, MGM and Constantin’s content in their HD video marketpalce (which is available now) and integrate Netflix’s Instant Queue feature to the new version of the dashboard.

Finally, the redesigned dashboard features Avatars, a digital replication of yourself, and “Primetime,” featuring a virtual gameshow which will offer real prizes. All of this thrown into a new user interface. Games will finally be allowed to run off the hard drive, and the Xbox 360 will add support for 16:10 resolutions over HDMI and VGA.