Live blogging from E3: Microsoft’s press event

We’ll be live blogging the Microsoft Xbox 360 press conference here at the beginning of the E3 video game trade show in Los Angeles. Thousands of press and other attendees are gathering at the Galen Center at the University of Southern California. Check back at 9:30 am and we’ll give you the view from the front row.

9:30 am — Microsoft’s press conference has begun with a live demo of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, starting with an underwater mission where frogmen are launching an attack on a Russian submarine. The frogmen come out of the water to see New York City in flames. The sub surfaces and then the frogmen board the vessel, starting a firefight with the crew. As we’ve noted before, this game promises to be one of the biggest titles of the year, and a contender for the best-selling game of all time in competition with last year’s Call of Duty Black Ops.

9:38 am The demo continues as the troops board speeding rubber boats and fight it out in the harbor, narrowly escaping. The rendering of the water, smoke and fire in the scene looks first class. As the scene ends, you see a panoramic view of New York in ruins.

9:40 am Glen Schofield, head of Activision Blizzard’s Sledgehammer games came out on stage to reiterate the game is coming on Nov. 8.

9:43 am Don Mattrick, head of the games business at Microsoft, came out to introduce the agenda. Starting with more games, including Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider. The demo starts with Croft hanging upside down, wrapped mummy-like in an underground cave. She has to burn her wrappings to get down, falls to the floor and gets a horrible side wound. It’s a younger, re-imagined Lara Croft in her first coming of age adventure. She tries to escape the cave, pursued by a stranger. There’s a feeling of claustrophobia as she uses her survival instincts to try to escape. The game launches in 2012 and it looks so … uncharted.

9:50 am Peter Moore of Electronic Arts says four EA titles will use Microsoft’s Kinect this year, including Tiger Woods, Madden, Fifa and an unannounced title. EA will have Kinect games coming based on Hasbro properties.

9:51 am Ray Muzyka of EA’s BioWare division is on stage to talk about Mass Effect 3, the latest in the epic sci-fi fantasy game. It will support Kinect via voice recognition. You can issue voice commands in the game to your comrades so they will attack enemies, even as you use a normal Xbox 360 controller to control Shepard. Commander Shepard can use an Omni Blade attached to his hand to attack rivals melee style. The game comes out in the first quarter of 2012.

9:57 am Yves Guillemot, chief executive of Ubisoft, has taken the stage after a demo of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier, which is a high-tech futuristic near-future combat game. Ghost Recon will also use Kinect to go through the game’s menu system, allowing you to use your voice to put together a custom weapon. You can say “optimize for close combat” and the weapon reconfigures to do so. You can also shoot using hand gestures with Kinect. You can say “optimize for range” and it will attach a sniper’s scope. The beginning of the event is clearly all about partners. They did not show Kinect in the actual combat of the game. Guillemot said all Tom Clancy titles will use Kinect in the future.

10:02 am Now there’s a demo of how you can use Kinect to control the Xbox 360 dashboard. If you say “Xbox Games,” it will bring up the games menu on the dashboard. Marc Whitten of Xbox Live says this is only the beginning of control. The company will increase the number of partners by a factor of 10 and the numbers of content will go from hundreds of thousands to millions.

Whitten said YouTube will come to Xbox Live. Bing voice search will also be available on Kinect.

10:07 am THQ showed a clip from UFC Undisputed. It looks pretty realistic, down to the bone-crunching slow motion punches.

10:14 am Epic Games’ Cliff Blezinski came out to introduce Gears of War 3 along with rapper Ice T. They’re playing a level of the game that occurs two years after the end of Gears of War 2. Jacinto has fallen, and Marcus, Dom and others have fled to a ship and think they’re safe. Of course, they’re not, as they have to attack a giant sea monster. It’s like a scene out of Lost Planet.

10:19 am Ryse is the new game of Roman warfare from Crytek. It will be linked to Kinect, and you can fight with your hands, in hand-to-hand sword combat.

10:21 am Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary will come out on Nov. 15. This is a remake of the classic original Halo game from 2001.

10:22 am Turn Ten studios is showing off Forza Motorsport 4.

10:24 am Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios is talking about the next version of Fable, called Fable The Journey. You can play it with Kinect. You can do things like roll your arms back and forth and making a bell ring like crazy.

10:28 am Minecraft, the smash indie hit on the PC, is coming to Kinect/Xbox 360, as an exclusive this fall.

10:29 am Disneyland Adventures is also coming to Kinect and the Xbox 360. You can use your arms and body to fly, Peter Pan style, through the air in that game at a high speed and wander through Alice’s Wonderland.

10:30 am LucasArts showed off Star Wars Kinect, where you can use your arms and body movements to control a Jedi’s actions in battles against Imperial foes.

10:35 am Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions demonstrated Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, a cute kids game for Kinect.

10:42 am Kudo Tsunoda has taken the stage to give an update on Kinect. He is showing off Kinect Fun Labs. You can take a picture and it will generate an avatar based on what you — and your clothing — look like. Another app lets you track your finger movements with Kinect Sparkler. You can then draw little light sparkles on the screen with your finger. The finger tracking looks a lot more accurate than other Kinect apps. So kudos for Kudo. Kinect Fun Labs is live today.

10:48 am Microsoft is planning another Kinect Sports game, dubbed Kinect Sports Season Two, with sports such as golf, tennis, football, skiing and others. You can choose your club in the golf game by voice commands. (The putting in the game looked good, but the demo was clearly canned, or pre-fabricated so the ball rolled around the cup before it went in).  The football game may make EA (maker of Madden) a little nervous. But the game uses a cutesy style, not realistic animation. The game is coming this holiday.

10:54 am MTV is back with another Kinect game, Dance Central 2. The new game will have more than 100 new pop dance songs.

10:58 am and now Don Mattrick has confirmed Halo 4, in the first installment in a brand new trilogy.