E3 2009 has officially kicked off with Microsoft holding the first press conference of the week at 10:30 AM PST.

**UPDATE - Want to watch the conference? Click here.

Beatles Rock Band Revealed!

Once the lights had dimmed audience members were serenaded by the sweet sounds of the Beatles as we got a first look at the opening cinematic for Beatles Rock Band. It was a pretty awesome intro, showcasing all the major eras of the band and featuring music that accompanied each era. After this short presentation we got a demo of the game in action with a bunch of the developers picking up their mics, guitars, and drum and playing a song from the game. 

After a brief song, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison arrived on stage, shortly followed by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Starr stayed on the stage for roughly a minute and a half, probably rushing themselves off because they were in the presence of the she-bitch, Yoko Ono. Why she was invited when the band's break-up can be solely pin-pointed on her is beyond me. But Paul and Ringo made a few jokes, said they were excited for the game, and left. They truthfully probably didn't know where they were. But it's all good.

Tony Hawk Rides again

The Beatles Rock Band was followed by Sir. Hawk stepping on stage to tell everyone about the innovative skateboard controller for the upcoming Tony Hawk Ride. After a quick summary of all the cool shit the board could do, Tony introduced a quick trailer for the game.

Modern Warfare 2 Demo

Next up was a brief demo of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The demo shown featured three levels from the game, all revolving around snow. The first showed two marines (?) climbing an ice cliff. And while the footage looked mostly pre-rendered it was still very impressive, graphically. Snow sailed through the air and stuck to the climbers and the look of the ice picks digging into the cliffside was very cool. The second level featured the standard FPS action we've come to expect from Call of Duty. Once again this level took place in the frozen tundra and had a lot of snow particles flying around and a draw distance that was very short due to all the ice and fog. But it was cool to see a new gun in use, one with a computer system/ gps device to target enemies. And the final level was very quick, and something we've seen in the reveal trailer were you ride on a snowmobile and shoot down other riders. Zipping past trees and other snowmobiles looked exhilarating and a cool game-play twist from the standard CoD norm. That's when the demo ended and we moved on to the next game...