Microsoft’s big press conference is being held here, at USC’s Galen Center.

Well here we go. The first of the big E3 events is about to go down, and honestly, I don’t have very high expectations for Microsoft. I know there’s going to be talk of the new Zune HD, but the day I get excited about the Zune I’ll probably see pigs flying out of a frozen over hell. I also know Tony Hawk is going to show up to demo his new fake skateboarding game (complete with fake skateboard), and we all know how totally aweseome those kind of celebrity demonstrations are…

I’m hoping for a decent amount of info about Halo 3: Recon ODST, including some gameplay footage. I expect a host of new XBL announcements, though I can’t imagine much more at the moment besides some new games for the Arcade and maybe a new movie or television partner for streaming content.

I just really want to see some good games. Mass Effect 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 are both great, but neither are system exclusive, and I don’t think they’ll show up here. There’s a quasi-new Gears expansion coming I hear, and will Fable 3 really be announced here? It seems like that already happened in the latest DLC. And I certainly can’t imagine anything as earth-shattering as last year’s FFXIII for 360 atomic bomb.

But I guess we’ll just have to see, and I’ll do my best to cover things as live as I’m able. But I need a few more sessions of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing to be able to type at the necessary pace to fully keep up. Stay tuned here for updates, or just come by after to see the complete post.

Liveblog starts below:

1:25 (Eastern) – G4′s countdown is at 30 seconds. Looks like we’re starting a bit early. Good, I can stop listening to this hot girl pretend she likes video games.

1:27 – Here we go. Intro video.

1:28 – The Beatles game! I forgot all about that. Cool animation.

1:29 – Alright, now it’s getting scary. Dancing elephants and flamingos and penguins.

1:31 - Demo time. It’s Rock Band! With Beatles songs! Can you imagine? Yes, actually, I can. It’s exactly like it sounds, which is cool, but not worth another $200 equipment and game purchase.

1:35 – A full length trailer showing a lot of the songs. Yup, it’s The Beatles. On Rock Band. Yup. Where the **** is Hey Jude?

1:39 - God, Yoko Ono just doesn’t age does she?

1:40 – Oooh wow, Ringo and Paul are actually here. That’s pretty cool actually. Unfortunately, they don’t really seem to understand what video games are and no one gave them anything coherent to say.

1:42 – VP announces no charts and graphs, 10 world premieres of games instead. Thank the lord.

1:43 – TONY HAWK! Just kidding, we all knew that was coming. Let’s see how awkward this is.

1:44 – Trailer. He’s not actually going to demo the board on stage? That’s probably a good idea actually.

1:47 – I don’t know man, I hope it’s good, but it doesn’t seem like it would be very intuitive. I’ll wait to play it before I make a final judgment.

1:48 - COD: Modern Warfare 2 time. Excellent. Trailer I’ve already watched earlier. The most movie-like game trailer I’ve ever seen though.

1:51 – Demo looks visually incredible. You’re following “Soap” McTavish up a mountain, he’s British SAS soldier you controlled in the last game who is now your leader. That’s kind of cool.

1:57 - Wow, that was crazy awesome. Proves the red dot scope is all you need to take out an entire army. The snowmobiling was pretty rad as well.

1:58 – Square Enix has arrived, time to talk FFXIII, last year’s huge shocker.

2:00 – Gameplay footage. Crazy explosions and typical FF stuff. Looks cool as expected. Token black comic relief guy seems out of place in a FF game though. Spring 2010 release, allegedly.

2:02 - Everything from here on out is a console exclusive. First up is Epic Games, Gears creators. Cliff is wearing a Bill Gates mugshot shirt. Humorous.

2:04 – Demoing a side-scroller for XBLA called Shadow Complex. Looks like Metroid meets Contra, I’d say that’s a good thing.

2:06 – Now it’s some stupid kart racer called Joy Ride. I think your Avatars can race each other. Meh.

2:08 – Crackdown 2 trailer. Honestly, I’ve barely heard of Crackdown 1.

2:10 - Wow, Left 4 Dead 2, already? Excellent.

2:11 – Splinter Cell. Sam shaved his goofy-ass hair. These games have never been my cup of tea. Insane graphics, though they’re clearly all cutscenes. The actual game demo looks good. I may have to give this a rent.

2:17 - Forza Motorsport 3. It’s not Gran Turismo and that’s all that really matters in the end. They’ve got an actual Audi R8 on stage. Give me Midnight Club any day over these racing sims. Although the crashing in this one is pretty good. I really like the custom painting aspect of it as well. The most in-depth system of its kind it seems.

2:24 - At last, ODST has arrived. Demo time right off the bat.

2:27 – The absurdly overpowered, scoped Halo 1 pistol is back! Hooray! You also get silenced weapons and an infrared visor. Everything else pretty much looks the same.

2:30 – Yeah, I mean, if campaign mode was your favorite part of Halo 3, I guess you’ll like this game. But wait, there’s more!

2:32 - Uh, top secret project called Halo: Reach. Zero idea what it’s about, or what type of game it is, but it’s coming in 2010, and you’ll find out more when you buy ODST. Convenient.

2:35 - Some sort of mystery game called Alan Wake from Remedy. It’s like Silent Hill with unscary monsters. Is he killing them by shining a flashlight on them? This does not look good.

2:39 – Now we’re talking Xbox Live. I predict boredom. Oh good, last.fm is coming to XBL. Yay…

2:41 – Live TV through a game console. That’s a pretty big deal actually. Comcast’s ears just perked up.

2:44 – Oh no, Facebook on Xbox 360. But OH YES, FELICIA DAY!

2:46 - She’s so nervous onstage, it’s adorable. Oh right, Facebook. Eh, it’s OK. You can share screenshots from games on Facebook now, which I would forever be embarrassed to do.

2:47 – Oh good, Twitter on Xbox as well. They know that there’s no keyboard that comes with the 360 right?

2:50 – Uh oh. Hideo Kojima is onstage. This is it, another atomic bomb is currently falling toward the earth.

2:51 – Wow, MGS is no longer Sony exclusive. Metal Gear Solid Rising is the next in the franchise, and it’s coming to 360. Trailer en route.

2:52 – Ohhh, but the game is starring Raiden, not Snake, too bad. Thus concludes the mysterious Kojima website countdown? Anyways, this is huge, I can’t think of a single significant, exclusive franchise Sony has left.

2:53 - Nooo, we were doing so well. Motion-sensing controller alert.

2:57 – Wow, nevermind, it’s Microsoft’s facial, voice and body sensing technology I’d heard rumors about, where there’s no controller and you use your whole body to play games. I can’t imagine this works half as well as it looked in the video, but it’s certainly a big step forward for the industry. But the problem remains, how do you play games for more than 20 minutes without getting exhausted?

3:00 – But there’s a lot more to it also than just controller-less gaming. Video chat, item scanning, facial and voice recognition, it’s all pretty revolutionary. Now Steven Spielberg is here just in case you weren’t sure how big of a deal this is. Also, a hint should have been that the Hideo Kojima announcement wasn’t the last item on the agenda, when that would have been huge enough.

3:02 – Live demo. The dude’s avatar is contorting itself in odd ways, but the Richochet demo is pretty 1:1, surprisingly enough. Oh snap, Nintendo diss. Pre-set waggle commands are no good.

3:09 - Demo of a full body painting game. Sure, all these games are pretty dumb, but the future implications for this technology are rock solid. I’m really impressed.

3:11 – Oh man, Peter Molyneux is here to further expand on the tech. We’re calling it “Natal” by the way, not sure why.

3:15 – Wow, the “Milo” demo is equally as impressive as the other one. A character that understands what you’re saying, your emotion and tone. You can hand items back and forth to him on the screen through the camera scanner. This is pretty crazy stuff right here, if it works half as well as it’s supposed to, this is a pretty big deal for the future of gaming.

All in all I’m extremely impressed with Microsoft’s press conference, I did not expect nearly anything close to this. The game lineup looked great, of course, but between Metal Gear coming to Xbox and the demo of this controllerless game technology is truly revolutionary. I look forward to hearing more about this tech soon when all the details are fully revealed.

Sony and Nintendo have a steep hill to climb tomorrow.

[all photos from Engadget]