Here are a couple interesting takeaways from our tour of the New Xbox Experience:

• "There's nothing to announce" right now regarding a keyword search for the Marketplace. Let's hope they either a) add one in or b) drastically improve how we find things
• Playing games from the hard drive will work fine for multi-disc games; in fact, you can pick which discs you want to rip (for example, we're superstitious and we'd only rip odd-numbered discs).
  
• As an example, we were told that Devil May Cry 4 is approximately a 4 or 5GB installation and took about ten minutes.
  
• You'll need to keep the disc in the drive the entire time. This is about speeding up load times (and hey, bonus tip: no more noisy DVD drive while you're playing!)
• The alerts look the same – actually, like the entire interface, they look sharper, cleaner. Oh, and the sound is the same.
  
• Yes, you can still use your gamertag pics and your themes (in fact, they look a lot better now!)

If you're curious just how much it costs to make a B-movie nowadays you could always risk a fat lip and call up Uwe Boll ... or just talk to the folks from Codemasters and Microsoft, who are releasing You're in the Movies this fall. According to a Microsoft representative, the game is being bundled with the Xbox Live Vision Cam for the not unreasonable price of $60 (remember, the camera is $40 alone). We've asked for information on the standalone SKU and we'll let you know when we hear back.

We got a chance to sit down with Keiichi Yano – chief creative officer of Lips developer iNiS – for a walkthrough of their upcoming Xbox 360 karaoke game. We'll get around to writing up some of our impressions later, but first we wanted to share some answers to our biggest questions about the game.

The microphone

• The wireless microphone will bind with the Xbox 360, no dongle required.
• It's unclear if it will work with other music games. When asked about Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour, Keiichi Yano told us, "That's a great idea. We would love to do that." Alas, it's up to those third-party devs to implement support for this peripheral.
• A second player can shake the microphone to instantly "jump in" to the song, no menus needed.
• They use 2 AA batteries, just like the Xbox 360 controller. Yanno said that, despite the motion-sensitivity and the lights, the battery life is pretty impressive already, on prototype hardware.
• Lips will be bundled with a black and a white controller

Your music

• Though they were only showing off the streaming functionality through a Zune, they assured us it would work just as simply through an iPod. When asked why they couldn't use one now, Yano responded, "Trust me. It works." We then crossed our arms and fell backwards into his waiting arms ...
• DRM'd songs can't be used, regardless of the DRM scheme used. So no Zune or iTunes songs.
• Lips will perform "vocal reduction" on your own songs, though they weren't showing the functionality off.
• You can be scored on your own songs.
• Audio from a Zune or iPod is streamed only, not downloaded, so you'll need to keep it nearby
  
• After telling us that they "actually don't know" if Lips will be able to read directly from your streaming media library (think iTunes) the way the Xbox 360 can, Yano said they'd like to implement the feature, which he followed up by saying "hint hint, wink wink, say no more." We asked him to repeat that in a British accent and he was all too happy to oblige.
• When asked if you would see your Avatar singing on the screen in the absence of a music video, they said they weren't talking about Avatars now.
• No word on how they'll implement lyrics or a beat chart for the songs, though Yanno promised it would be "very, very compelling."

Its music

• There are only three confirmed songs: "Mercy" by Duffy; "Young Folk" by Peter, Bjorn & John; and "Bust a Move" by Young MC
  
• All songs will be master tracks and will include the original music videos
• Rap songs work a little differently, it's not just about rhythm.

Yeah, but doesn't it give you motion sickness? This is the response you get when you tell someone: "Dude, I just played Mirror's Edge -- it's awesome." And this is how you answer: "No, dude -- you don't get sick."

Mirror's Edge achieves bounding, bouncing payoffs without the queasy side effects with a dot. Yeah, a dot. What you don't see in the "doctored" screens is a tiny blue/white blip. The dot isn't working alone though, the developers found they needed to widen the camera's field of vision as well as place it in the characters eyes as opposed to her head, reducing much of that first-person staple: head bobbing. The effect: a game that seems like it has no right not making you sick.

Portfolio.com just published a short excerpt of its interview with EA boss John Riccitiello who tells the site that it's "got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development" including "the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about -- in partnership with Lucas, coming out of BioWare." One doesn't need to connect too many dots to arrive at the conclusion that BioWare is returning to the Star Wars universe with a Knights of the Old Republic MMO.

Of course, this product has been rumored for ... well, for a long time. Separately confirming a BioWare / LucasArts collaboration and a BioWare MMO project lead to certain obvious conclusions and countless other rumors and leaks seemed to do everything but confirm (and some denied) the project's existence. Though it would appear Riccitiello wasn't quite ready to put a name on that project – it's Portfolio.com connecting those dots – by referencing that this is the game that "people are dying for us to talk to them about" he clearly seems to be pointing to KOTOR.

[Update: We've just spoken with N. Evan Van Zelfden, the writer of the report, who told us that when asked specifically if this game was "KOTOR Online", Riccitiello responded unequivocally, "Yes." So, there you have it – sounds like we can take off our skeptical glasses.]

Following a discussion of Siren, we asked Sony Worldwide Studios pres Shuhei Yoshida about development of the not-quite-funny episodic comedy series Rat Race for the PSN. Yoshida laughed, telling Joystiq: "You have good memory. Yeah, maybe I talked about episodic games and that's my fault. So, yeah, we stopped it. We really liked the concept; it's like The Office TV series. It was kind of funny but we were not quite happy with how the game was turning out and there was some difficulty in development."

So, for those of you cursed with a penchant for terrible comedy, you'll probably want to dull the pain with yet another episode of Two and a Half Men. The rest of you? Keep an eye out for the remainder of our interview with Yoshida.

Sure, we've been trying to get to the bottom of the inconsistent incompatibility between Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and non-Guitar Hero guitars for weeks. Some players who try to use, let's say, the Rock Band Stratocaster would be greeted by the above screen while other encountered no problems at all.

Well, at least we're not going crazy: Activision told MTV News that "a recent auto-downloaded title update" to the Xbox 360 version of GH: Aerosmith "should" make that game compatible with other guitars, like the Rock Band Strats. Now, that wasn't so hard, was it Activision? (Also, you couldn't have just told us when we asked you fifty times earlier this month. We're feeling like Rodney Dangerfield over here).

In an interview with MTV News, Xbox bossman Don Mattrick confirmed that Bungie was indeed working on a new Halo game for Microsoft Game Studios. Asked to clarify if this project was either Ensemble Studios' upcoming Halo Wars or the still mysterious Peter Jackson Halo Chronicles project, Mattrick said neither. Evidently, this would be another Halo game. We know, you're shocked.

The real question is: Is Mattrick talking about the long-rumored Halo Recon Advanced Warfighter title or the recently teased game whose announcement was unceremoniously canceled? Or perhaps those two are one and the same? Regardless, Mattrick wasn't sharing that info; he quickly changed the subject.

We had a chance to speak with newly appointed general manager of Microsoft Game Studios Phil Spencer earlier this afternoon but there's good news and bad news. The bad news: We spoke with him just a couple hours before Bungie announced that the very same Microsoft Game Studios "changed" plans to announce the game this week. The good news: We just so happened to ask Spencer about the lack of a Bungie announcement in Microsoft's press conference (as expected) and the publishing relationship with Bungie.

Spencer: "Our relationship with Bungie was always about a triple-A creative studio building content for our platform, and our working relationship brought about Halo 1, Halo 2, Halo 3 – which I think are great games. If that's the core of the relationship, creative people building content for our platforms, I don't think the relationship has changed. We have a relationship with a very talented studio who wants to create games for Xbox.

After weeks of speculation regarding their new project, Bungie just updated their site with the sobering news that plans to announce the game at E3 "were just changed by [its] publisher." We can only assume that that publisher is none other than Microsoft Game Studios; if so, it's certainly not a promising sign for the newly freed Bungie's publishing relationship with former parent company Microsoft.

We've put requests into Bungie and Microsoft. Read Bungie pres Harold Ryan's message after the break. (Note there's no mention of the publisher; looks like they want to keep it clean).

[Update: We just heard back from Bungie's Luke "Luke Smith" Smith who tells us, "We still have an exclusive publishing agreement with Microsoft, as we confirmed when we announced the split last year. That arrangement has not changed." So, there you have it. No word back from the Big M. Update 2: Luke's keeping busy. He left two comments on NeoGAF (here and here) not only assuring skeptics that this was in fact not a part of the game's marketing plan ("not our style") and that Bungie's publisher is, indeed, Microsoft.

Update 3: Those sleuths at X3F have noticed a sort of reversal in Bungie's teasing: references to the superintendent in Halo 3 have been removed. Update 4: We interviewed Microsoft Game Studio's Phil Spencer earlier this afternoon, just before this news broke, but conveniently we had already asked him about the absence of Bungie's game at the Microsoft press conference. Read his comments here.

Update 5: Xboss Don Mattrick has confirmed that Bungie is in fact working on a new Halo title. Whether or not this unannounced project is that title is unclear. Update 6 (17 July): Mattrick tells the L.A. Times the Bungie announcements was cut to -- get this -- save time. After all, they had an "embarrassment of riches" as it was.]

10:23 am PT: We're en route to Sony now, stay tuned! In the meantime, have you prepped your bingo card? We haven't won yet this week.

11:11: We're waiting outside the entrance. Tons of people in front of the entrance to the show. Veronica Belmont is getting tons of fan response for Qore. People are taking pictures with her.

11:25: We've just taken our seats at Sony's conference in front of what could only be described as a wall of screens: 7 main screens and roughly 64 smaller screens. OMG, Vaio LCD's everywhere. You'd think this was a Sony event.

Want to get a better look at the so-called "New Xbox Experience"? Microsoft shared a couple screens with us showing off the new UI, including a look at the home screen (above), Avatars, your games, the Marketplace (sorta), and Netflix. Dig in!

Immediately following this morning's press conference, we got a chance to sit down with Xbox VP of Strategy and Business Development, Shane Kim, to pick his brain about the new Dashboard (called the "New Xbox Experience") and its various components, like the Netflix integration, Avatars, Party support, Primetime, and more.

Netflix

• You must be an Xbox Live Gold subscriber as well as a Netflix subscriber to use the new Netflix service
• Similarly, anyone you share your movie with would also need to be an XBL and Netflix subscriber
• Like Netflix's current streaming service, all content will be SD only for now. They could offer HD streams as soon as Netflix is ready to deliver

Avatars

• They're not looking to create a "Home-like" environment for your Avatars – that doesn't mean a third-party wouldn't be able to do that, however
• You'll be able to keep your gamertag pics if you so choose, though they're encouraging everyone to transition to Avatars
• Games can reward you with items for your Avatar (chainsaw, please!)
• There will be no increase in the 100-friend cap on Xbox Live this Fall
• There will not be any Group (think Facebook) or Clan support in this update – they're hoping the "Party" system will satisfy those requests (spoiler: it won't)

A reliable source close to Joystiq informed us that Geometry Wars 2 will be announced at Microsoft's press conference tomorrow morning. That wouldn't be much of a surprise -- after all, the achievements were leaked on Xbox.com two weeks ago.

Our source informs us that the game has already passed certification, clearing the major barrier of entry for all Xbox Live Arcade titles. Is Microsoft going to "bring Geometry Wars 2 home" tomorrow? We already know they're launching Coffeetime Crosswords and Shred Nebula next week, but a follow-up to Xbox 360's Number 1 launch title would be polygonal icing on the keynote cake.