Microsoft’s goal was to show and not tell; they succeeded. Whether or not it met your expectations or your goals, they put on one heck of a show. Microsoft opened up with the expected. High profile multiplatform titles: Beatles Rock Band, Tony Hawk RIDE, Final Fantasy XIII and Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Each one looks great and we will be talking about them more over the next week.

Then it was time for the salvo of exclusives: Shadow Complex, Joyride, Crackdown 2, Left 4 Dead, Splinter Cell Conviction, Forza 3, Halo ODST, Halo Reach and Alan Wake. They were the type of titles it would take to combat the stellar line-ups from the rest of the big three.

Next Xbox announced a few major partnerships. SKY will now take the role of Netflix for Europe. And the digital market place will be rebranded and Zune Market Place with instant streaming of 1080p HD movies. Facebook and Twitter will be coming to live. You will be able to use both via live as well as have enhanced connectivity. Last FM will also be coming to Live for all Gold Users.

Metal Gear Solid Rising is the new secret project of Kojima. For the first time, Xbox 360 users can experience the world of Metal Gear Solid.

The real star of the show was Project Natal. Microsoft demonstrated a few tech demos of the project that showed the breadth of the possibilities. Project Natal removes the barrier of a controller allowing the player to be the controller. It also supports facial recognition and voice recognition. The demonstrations were actually very fluid and it’s nearly impossible to describe how intriguing the possibilities of this product are. You really do need to YouTube it to see the videos. Peter Molyneux showed us his new project: Milo; an AI that actually interacts with the player. If this could be integrated into NPC interaction in the future, the possibilities are astounding, but there is nothing really concrete that you will see related to it in the expected future, as no dates have been announced.

Microsoft also touted around a few celebrities, including Tony Hawk, Ringo Star, Yoko Ono, Paul McCartney , Steven Spielberg and Felica Day.