By: Kevin Larrabee

Another year, and another Microsoft GDC keynote. As you can tell from the main picture, the big (although everyone already knew it was happening) announcement came when Epic’s “CliffyB’s” silhouette appeared behind a Gears of War inspired covering. The roars of a chainsaw filled the auditorium, and CliffyB charged through a clearly tough and very thick sheet of paper, personally I think they need to upgrade the chainsaw on that gun before Gears 2 comes out in November of 2008. Gears wasn’t the only bit of news to come out of the GDC keynote, hit continue to read more about the biggest bits of news and to see the debut trailer of Gears of War 2!

We all know what to expect when it comes to these keynotes, numbers, and press release inspired speeches. John Schappert headed the keynote, but I still miss the unmistakable charisma of Peter Moore, who is now the head of EA Sports. Here are the important numbers that were thrown out:

• 7- 1 Million Selling Games (Bioshock, Halo 3, Madden 08, Guitar Hero III, Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4)
• 1,000,000,000 Achivements have been unlocked
• Over $250 Million spent on the Xbox Live Marketplace
• Over 1,000 Halo 3 saved films uploaded per day (30% more that Youtube, says Shappert)
• Over 3 million songs downloaded for Rock Band

Chris Satchell came on stage after the all the big numbers were out in the open to show off what will be coming from the XNA development kit community. He announced, “Xbox Live Community Games”, it looks like they may actually succeed at creating the “Youtube” of gaming that they have promised. Basically, the community will decide which games will be featured by a simple voting system. Here is how XBL Community Games was explained, “‘Xbox Live Community Games’ will give creators a huge audience to share their creativity with. Game distribution will be democratized, allowing the community to control the content. Create, Submit, Peer Review, Play are the four key steps.” Having the ability to get your game out to an audience of 10 million on Xbox Live is very appealing for aspiring game developers. Also, it is worth noting that some of the games made with XNA will also work on the Zune media player, just one more step and we can have an “Xboy” portable gaming system, come on Microsoft!

Team Ninja’s Tomonobu Itagaki took the stage to show off Ninja Gaiden II. He quickly showed off a level that hasn’t been shown before to the public, and he made sure to point out that the game was running on, “real hardware.” He finished up the presentation announcing that Ninja Gaiden II will ship in June 2008, let’s just hope this is true so we don’t have another summer drought of games.

Peter Molyneux was up next to show off the highly anticipated (and delayed) Fable 2. I think the wildcard announcement of the keynote has to be the XBLA mini game for Fable 2 that will be released before the game ships. In the mini game you will actually be able to stock up on cash to be used in Fable 2 (money will be very important in the Xbox sequel). This is a very inventive way to give the gamers something early, and to create some more buzz for the game as well. Is this going to be a future trend in games? Will Wright is doing something similar with Spore by releasing a creature creator weeks before Spore is released in September.

Not a bad GDC keynote for Microsoft, they gave us some things to look forward to, and kept everyone optimistic about the 360’s 2008 lineup.