Bill Gates made his first appearance at a Microsoft E3 press conference, saying that “Xbox 360 is laying an incredible foundation” for the company. “Before our competition even enters the marketplace, we will have a ten million unit head start with Xbox 360. It's a number we only dreamed about a year ago.” He went on to describe the newLive Anywhere service, which extends Xbox Live functionality (friends lists, achievements and game invites) to PC and mobile devices. The system will also support multiplayer functionality across platforms, so two people could chat, invite and play Shadowrun together even though one player is on a 360 and the other is on a PC. “We think Microsoft is probably the only company that can pull this off,” Gates said.
The conference ended with an expected flourish - a teaser sequence from Halo 3, which revealed a logo and a tagline - “Finish the Fight” - and a 2007 release date.
