Today’s the day, Microsoft’s Pre E3 press briefing starts in just a few hours. While we wait, here’s what’s happened today, so far:

• Let’s Move to the EA Presser, shall we?
• [Update]XBOX LIVE to offer Full Game Downloads starting in August
  Like Burnout, Warhawk, and SOCOM on the PS3, XBOX LIVE will also become home to downloadable versions of disc based games. I think that’s great. Hopefully, it will take an iPod / Steam model where you can download your games as much as you want on your system. I can’t afford Microsoft’s hard drives.
  30 games are said to be ready to launch with the service. Pricing is supposed to be in line with those of the disc copies.
• Microsoft’s Up
• RUMOR Halo: Reach, Joy Ride, Shadow Complex, Alan Wake, Forza 3 for 360?
  Courtesy of some blank achievement pages showing up on Xbox.com, some games from the MS briefing may already have been revealed. Speculate away.
• RUMOR Kojima Not at Microsoft Briefing?
  If you’ve been dreading a Metal Gear announcement for XBOX 360, you might be relieved to hear that Kojima is out sightseeing and going to see the new Terminator movie. From Joystiq:
  ”When we stumbled upon him outside our hotel he told us that he’d be doing some sightseeing around (not so) sunny LA and then seeing "Dun-Dun Dun Da-Dun." We assume he means Terminator Salvation and, despite our instincts, we couldn’t bring ourselves to tell him he shouldn’t. He did say he enjoyed Star Trek, though — in fact, he gave it two thumbs up.”
  I laugh. At the quote. It’s funny.
• Digger, Mushroom Wars Coming to PSN
  New games announced from Creat Studios. Click through for pictures.
• [Update]Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition Coming to PC, XBLA
   
  In more Monkey Island news, a remake of the original, featuring HD graphics, reworked soundtrack, and full voice overs, will be making its way to XBLA and PC, courtesy of LucasArts. Release date: Summer!
• [Update]Tales of Monkey Island Episodic Game Announced for PC, WiiWare
  Woohoo! WiiWare continues to me a great place to go for the old point and click adventures as the five part Tales of Monkey Island was just announced by LucasArts at E3. The episodes will be released monthly. As for when it’ll start, it’ll start in July!
• Guitar Hero Following Rock Band to PSP, Continuing the Fight
  There are no specifics on the PSP iteration of Guitar Hero yet, but it promised to feature “a drum component.”
• RUMORS Abound: Tony Hawk and MW2 Exclusive Deals with Microsoft?
  These may just be nothing, but the moving up of the briefing start time, Tony Hawk’s presence at the show, Geoff Keighley telling Modern Warfare 2 to tune in to the 360 conference, etc, has N4G all alight for some possible exclusivity announcements in the next few hours, ranging from full exclusivity in the case of Tony Hawk Ride, to exclusive DLC for MW2. This is why the calm before the E3 storm is so fun.
  Somehow, I don’t know that Activision Blizzard can afford to alienate so many of their fans. Their goal is to make money after all, and this kind of bad blood would be damaging for years, no matter what MS could pay them.
• LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1 – 4 Announced for 2010
  Announcement trailer here. It’s cute. No gameplay clues. Coming to all major platforms.
• Metal Gear Next Teaser Site is Now Sunny
  Mercifully, the mystery behind Kojima Productions next project will probably be revealed within the next few days. Already we know a new Metal Gear is in the works for PSP (from the PSP Go leak). However, there’s been three of those already. The exciting part is thinking that a new Metal Gear may be coming to home consoles. Check out some things I deciphered from the censored Kojima interview.
• PSP Go Leaked? Speculative Fun
  Is this really the case? We have a few moments before E3 starts. Let’s take a look.
• WipEout HD Fury DLC Expansion Announced
  PlayStation Blog just revealed that WipEout HD will be getting 8 new tracks, 13 new ships, three new game modes, more Trophies, and a new menu interface in the Fury Expansion DLC pack arriving this summer. As described at the PSBlog:
  Eliminator will forgo the racing and be completely about shooting down opponents.
  Zone Battle will force you to choose using zone energy to either go faster, or recharge your shields.
  Detonator has you piloting your ship through mine infested tracks and scoring points for taking out those mines.
  Eliminator and Zone Battle are also both playable online. First showing of the pack will be at E3, of course. No price was announced. See a trailer here.
• Tony Hawk Ride to be Demonstrated by Tony Hawk at XBOX Conference
  That’s what he tweeted, so that’s what we know. Looking at the history of XBOX conferences, it’s not really surprising that they’d have a live show of some sort.
• Fatal Frame IV Cancelled in Europe as Well
  For some reason, Temco decided not to release the Wii horror sequel in North America. Now, they’re shutting down localization of the game for a European release as well. No reasons were given as to why.
  I suspect though that once Dead Space Extraction, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles do fairly well, Tecmo might changes their minds.
• Crysis 2 Announced for PC, PS3, and 360
  "The development of Crysis 2 marks a major stepping stone for our studio," said Cevat Yerli, CEO and President of Crytek. "This is not only the next game in the Crysis franchise, it’s the first title we are developing for consoles and the first title being built on CryENGINE 3." – from Kotaku.
  No release date was announced, but EA will continue to be their publisher, probably for the third game as well in the planned Crysis Trilogy.

Here’s we go.

• Milo The easiest way to describe this: a virtual boy in a virtual world that can talk to you, recognizes emotions. Think, Nintendogs, but with a boy. Incredible technology, but somewhat creepy.
• The motion camera is basically a motion capture camera, like you’d see used in game production, except that it’s tied to a model that’s actually in a playable game. While impressive, I’m not sure that this’ll actually make for fun games. As an interface though, so the NXE interface, it’ll be a much welcome addition to the 360, if it’s cheap enough.
• Project Natal revealed as the Camera, Motion Control, Thing. It’s got voice command too. It’ll work with all 360’s, ever. I like how it even works to control the NXE interface. Face recognition is there too. I don’t like signing in all the time, so I like that. Steven Spielberg is up. What are we going to see?
• KOJIMA! Metal Gear Solid: Rising. What’s Lightning Bolt Action? No longer Stealth Action?
• Twitter on Xbox 360. Good thing I have a chatpad. Both this and Facebook coming in the fall.
• Facebook on Xbox 360. Screenshots and text from games! Facebook Connect. Neat.
• XBOX Live Party is going to offer communal media experiences.
• Instant 1080p HD TV Coming with Zune Marketplace.
• Sky and Live in Europe. Live TV on a console without an add-on.
• Netflix getting Better on XBOX Live. No more reliance on a PC to add movies to your viewing list. Just browse and watch.
• Last.fm coming to XBOX Live. Bringing music to XBOX Live. Gold members get it free!
• ALAN WAKE First Playable! Spring 2010. It looks pretty good. I think it’s the design direction. It’s got a movie feel, but it’s all in game. Good times.
• Halo Reach looks to be real. More Halo games. Looks like more money for MS. It’s scheduled for Fall 2010, but the beta will come packed with ODST.
• Halo 3: ODST looks way better than Halo 3. Awesome. Surpressed weapons and a low-light vision mode. Halo 1 pistol.
• Forza 3 announced for October. Looks really, really nice. I’m not sure GT can keep up.
• Splinter Cell: Conviction only on 360. The new design looks pretty cool. Has a… Fringe and GTAIV feel to the visuals, with text and video projected into the environment.
• Crackdown 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 Coming to Xbox 360. Can’t really say anything here. Live feeds are down. I’ll let you know what I think later on.
• Joy Ride, Avatar enabled XBLA Game. The game’s a racer, it’s free. They’ll be selling car upgrades and tracks though. The cool part? You can share the tracks you buy with friends.
• Epic Announces Shadow Complex, Exclusive XBLA title. It looks kind of like Bionic Commando Rearmed, but it most reminds me of Castlevania games, with its really big map and the way its divided. Coming this summer.
• Live demo of FFXIII running on 360! Hmm, so they have been working on it. They summon Odin in this one. It’s in English, sounds okay. The game is coming in Spring 2010.
• Modern Warfare 2 onstage gameplay demo! We see first person climbing up the side of an ice wall, then infiltration into a camp, then an escape. There is indeed riding on snowmobiles in the game. Sure wish the feeds were working. I’d like to see.
• Tony Hawk comes to debut final Tony Hawk Ride Board. A trailer following, showing real skaters really enjoying the game and talking about how it’ll be accessible to everyone. Skating in the living room, without the danger of real injury.
• John is on stage. Yay, no sales charts. Instead, we’re getting 10 first ever looks at games!
• Basically, they love the game.
• Beatles on stage, and related surviving peoples.
• Downloadable albums will be coming. All You Need is Love is XBOX LIVE exclusive. Well, there’s the first one.
• I Saw Her Standing There, I Want to Hold Your Hand, I Feel Fine, Day Tripper, Taxman, I am the Walrus, Back in the U.S.S.R., Octopus’s Garden, Here Comes the Sun, Get Back revealed as songs included in the game.
• Looks like the rumors about three people harmonizing is true. They’ve got a 6 player The Beatles Rock Band demonstration going on, three vocals, guitar, bass, and drums with cymbals set. The game screen looks to have about the same setup, except now there are three tracks going by in the vocals part.
• They’re playing an incredibly stylish The Beatles: Rock Band trailer. Very cool. Oh, it’s the opening cinematic to the game.

Following closely behind the recent releases of Magic Ball, Cuboid, and Mahjong Tales, Creat Studios just announced Digger and Mushroom Wars for the PlayStation Network coming this summer.

Digger looks to me like an HD Dig Dug. It’ll feature a classic and remake mode.

Mushroom Wars is an arcade style real time strategy game. In game voice chat, custom soundtracks, and Youtube recording will be supported.

Pricing will probably be in the $10 range, but for official pricing and release timing, stay tuned.

[Joystiq]

Could there be a huge PSN presence for Sony at this year’s E3? PSN devices on the way?