Microsoft held their press conference today to pimp their wares; while I wasn't expecting much in the way of big news I was very impressed to hear that they've secured Grand Theft Auto 4 for a simultaneous release with its PlayStation counterpart - giving gamers one less reason to need a PlayStation system. The Xbox 360 version will also feature exclusive new episodic content available via Xbox Live. Yowza!

For me their really big announcement was Live Anywhere, which Bill Gates - at his first ever E3 - went into some detail about. Basically it is a massive project to allow a really tight level of integration between a variety of platforms - Xbox 360, PC (maybe Windows Vista only, not sure yet) and mobile devices.

For those hanging out for Halo 3 information, not much was given - they showed a teaser/trailer which apparently is also available on Xbox Live, but it didn't show any gameplay. It was neat as far as cinematics go (like several of the other titles shown), but hopefully we'll hear more about it in the coming days.

The gauntlet has been thrown down - Microsoft are claiming they're going to have a 10 million unit head start on Sony by the time the PlayStation 3 has shipped. They're up to just over 5 million units shipped, so they're got to crank out some serious sales in the next few months - but I definitely get the impression that're dedicated to hitting this mark, even if it means driving out dump trucks full of Xbox 360 consoles to shopping malls and giving them away.