10:22 am PT -- We've taken our seats at Microsoft's GDC keynote -- they're very nice, but we're not sure where to take them yet. The pawn shop seems too far, so we guess we'll just push them to the front row.

10:23 am PT -- A friendly announcer asks us turn off all cellphones and electronic devices. Hmm, yeah, we're not convinced that's something you want to say to an army of laptop-wielding nerds.

10:26 am PT -- Loud James Bond music blasts us from the stage. Obviously, we now expect John Schappert to descend from the ceiling.

10:27 am PT -- It will be "greatly appreciated" if we turn off our electronic devices. Somehow, we suspect our readers won't share that sentiment if we comply.

10:29 am PT -- Jamil Moledina steps onto the stage and welcomes us (he's polite!) "Change is the heart of opportunity in the games industry," he says. "The old boundaries of gamer, developer, technology and social technology are starting to shimmer."

Next week, the Joystiq crew will pack their precious belongings (a laptop, some clothes, and a towel) before flying off to the 2008 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. So now seems about as good a time as any to reflect back on last year's GDC for a taste of what's to come. Sure, there's a dearth of playable demos when compared to E3 or TGS, but what other trade show can say they redefined the role of adhesive in internet conversations?

Keep reading for our remembrances of the keynotes (what's Game 3.0 again?), last year's big news (Harmonix and EA are doing what?), the sessions and interviews (the Wii is how many Gamecubes duct-taped together?), and the whole culture of GDC (Miyamoto made quite a splash).

In a keynote entitled "A Future Wide Open: Unleashing the Creative Community," Microsoft will either discuss the implications of chasing Sound Blaster owners from their homes... or the "Xbox 360 platform's next step in democratizing game development," which is what it says here in the press release. The same informative block of text notes that Microsoft's keynote at this year's Game Developers Conference -- its first since 2005 -- will be delivered by John Schappert, otherwise known as "Corporate Vice President of LIVE, Software and Services for the Interactive Entertainment Business" since leaving EA in August 2007.

Schappert's schpeech will delve into the Xbox 360's schtrategy for 2008, touching on topics such as online gaming, digital distribution and support of smaller developers. Top developers are also part of the talk, with some of their plans for the Xbox 360 expected to be unfurled and plastered across colorful pie charts. Joystiq will provide a full report during the keynote on February 22nd, taking special care to describe a future wide open. We suspect it'll be obnoxiously bright and smell vaguely of gasoline.

If you saw our coverage -- don't click yet if you didn't -- you know the Guitar Hero-related jokes from the final* Bill Gates CES keynote. But even if you know the premise, these videos are worth watching as a study in tradeshow comedy. Is humor in the timing or the delivery?

See the keynote comedy after the break.


*As Microsoft chairman, that is.

During Sony's E3 2007 keynote, President and CEO Jack Tretton announced a new partnership with developer NCSoft, creators of online titles like Lineage, Guild Wars, and City of Heroes. As part of the partnership, NCSoft will begin developing exclusive online titles for the Playstation 3 and its Playstation Network.

This exclusivity can apply to both new and current IPs, although no specific games were mentioned. "Only the Playstation Network can support the types of games that NCSoft has become famous for" says Tretton. At the moment, it is unknown whether NCSoft will continue to support other platforms.

Ok, we're live from Microsoft's E3 2007 keynote! The event officially kicks off at 8:30PM PDT, but we'll be doing our usual pre-game coverage here.

8:06PM PDT - Ok, so the event is being held at -- get this -- a high school? It's a damned fancy one if you ask us, full coliseum style seating.

It took a good four minutes to traverse roughly half the line that circled a whole city block around the Moscone center's South Hall. We know your time is important, though, so we sped the above up to double speed.

10:07 a.m.: We're sitting at the Miyamoto keynote. We count five screens of nine Wii logos apiece, totaling 45 Wii logos. That's a lot of Wii! The podium glows blue with a white Nintendo logo and the background shows an effervescent blue cloud that fits accordingly to the inoffensive electronic beats.

Judging from the line outside Moscone's South Hall at about 10:15 this morning, it might have seemed like everyone at the Game Developers Conference was at Sony boss Phil Harrison's keynote speech. That's far from true, though, as Moscone's West Hall was filled with attendees either unwilling, unable or uninterested in attending the major speech.

Eric Bendle form Sierra Nevada Corp. (pictured above) said he was heading down to the speech but "got distracted" by the stuff happening on the convention floor. Bendle seemed mildly interested to find out what was being announced at the speech, but as a defense contractor, he felt the content probably didn't apply too directly to him anyway.

Read on for more justifications for missing the speech.

We don't want to alarm anyone, but Nintendo's own Shigeru Miyamoto will be coming to San Francisco this march to conduct a keynote at the Game Developers Conference. Before anyone gets the wrong impression about this and rushes to Wal-Mart for some poster board in an attempt to be internet famous, please, don't. It makes for fantastic blogging fodder to be sure, but lets spare the development community what should be reserved for the internets.

As his first GDC keynote since 1999, Miyamoto's appearance could possibly be the most popular event at the conference. It's not indicated exactly as to what Mario's papa will be talking about beyond "the creative process behind his work on highly-regarded software as well as his thoughts on new Nintendo hardware", his keynote is titled "A Creative Vision." Maybe if we're all good boys and girls, he'll drop less "bombs" and clue us in on the secret of the DS printing money.

Like most of the rest of the tech-obsessed world, we were following along with rapt attention today as Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone to a massive MacWorld audience. Sure, it's pretty cool that you'll soon be able to make phone calls on the world's most popular MP3 player, but what we're really excited about is the gaming potential of the device. Why? Here's why:

• Dual-touch: Imagine the Nintendo DS touch screen. Now stretch it out, design it for fingers instead of a stylus, and let it recognize two different inputs simultaneously. We can only imagine the gaming possibilities designers can create with this.
• Accelerometer: Sure, Jobs uses it to simply switch between portrait and landscape modes, but we don't see any reason this feature can't be used for WarioWare Twisted-style games with tilt-based controls
• Internet: Wi-Fi is already old news on the Nintendo DS and PSP, but since the iPhone is a cell phone, you could theoretically connect to your cell network and play online even without a Wi-Fi hot spot. The built-in web browser has the potential to allow for mobile play on thousands of free Flash games as well.
• Built-in camera: This may sound a little silly, but we were really excited about the EyeToy-like functionality of the Gizmondo. Now that that's crashed and burned, the iPhone's built-in two-megapixel camera and detailed widescreen could bring the concept back.
• Distribution: iTunes is already on millions of computers and has trained users to accept making micropayments for downloadable content. Oh, and it already has games. Dare we dream of downloading games-on-demand over a cell phone network?

While Jobs didn't specifically mention any gaming applications for the iPhone during his keynote speech, we think it's only a matter of time before some form of interactive entertainment is announced for the device. At least, we hope it's only a matter of time. Please?

I'm here at the Serious Games Summit in Arlington, VA where the keyword of the keynote speech by MIT's Henry Jenkins was convergence. Not necessarily technological convergence -- that mythical, magical black box that will control your media and your life -- but a cultural convergence that allows a community to form a collective intelligence around a game, movie or TV show. The real appeal of media experiences today, Jenkins argued, is not necessarily the product itself, but the community that grows around it, the participatory culture that doesn't come in the box.

Jenkins urged the serious games movement to keep this in mind when designing the educational and socially relevant games the conference is focused on. He challenged the diverse crowd of experts from the government, education, military, health and social change fields to create educational games that were less like a spelling bee (high on memorization, low on discussion and engagement) and more like Scrabble (high on experimentation, low on penalties for risk). Jenkins also echoed Will Wright's call for games that are interdisciplinary, that take on multiple agendas instead of just narrowly focusing on one subject.

With the final part of his speech, Jenkins focused on specific projects trying to achieve these goals -- games like Revolution, a Neverwinter Nights mod that encourages students to role-play as a colonial patriot, and Labyrinth, an upcoming game that teaches math and logic skills on top of a search for a lost pet. Jenkins also acknowledged the challenges of getting these products out to market (some teachers refused to buy Revolution because of occult symbols in Neverwinter Nights, for instance), but seemed hopeful that companies could break through these barriers by joining together.

Apparently our transcription, with requisite PictoChat commentary, didn't convince everyone that Ken Kutaragi's keynote, titled "PS3 Creating Next Generation of Computer Entertainment," was a total snoozefest. So we followed up with an editorial explaining why, yet some remained unconvinced. So, in an attempt to remove ourselves from this equation, we present the translated audio from the event (.mp3) for your listening pleasure.* If you manage to make it through the whole thing, what do you think? What else, besides Killzone 2, was missing? Where was the PSP?

*We'd love to upload a cleaner sound file if any audio-inclined reader wants to clean it up.

See also:
Sony's trainwreck of a keynote
Blogging Ken Kutaragi's PS3 keynote

It's hot and humid outside the room in which Sony's Ken Kutaragi will deliver the most anticipated keynote address of Tokyo Games Show. The journalists who are queuing up are sure to be tired and cranky by the time they get into the show, ensuring, perhaps, a properly sceptical reception for the tsu-hype-nami to follow.

After a raucous round of DS PictoChat, the keynote starts at 10:11am. Introducing Ken Kutaragi, CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment, reading from his latest work, "PS3 Creating Next Generation of Computer Entertainment."

Sony asks us to refrain from taking pictures of demo stuff. Fine, we'll oblige, but we won't like it. 'Cause you wouldn't want to show off the product you want everyone to buy in a couple months. Instead, we'll provide some additional color commentary, courtesy the press and attendees hanging out in the DS PictoChat chatroom.