Today kicks off the 2009 iteration of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and Microsoft took to the stage for the first of the three major keynotes this afternoon (Nintendo and Sony will have to follow their act tomorrow). The biggest news in terms of hardware was certainly Project Natal, bringing completely controller-less gameplay and user interface navigation to the console via a peripheral looking something like a camera meets a sensor bar.

Totally absent was an announcement of a new console edition — perhaps to the relief of consumers and developers alike. With the new gesture control, full body mocap, and facial and voice recognition coming from Natal, game makers will have plenty to keep busy with in lieu of learning to program for entirely new console hardware. 

Fortunately there were plenty of other announcements even beyond Natal and some of the impressive tech demos shown. Beyond showcasing trailers from 10 upcoming titles, Microsoft announced some incredibly smart social networking integrations coming to Xbox Live, including a Facebook experience "made for the living room," last.fm social music integration, and a much-lauded integration of everybody's microblogging darling Twitter. One of the more interesting sub-features among them will be the ability to take in-game screenshots and upload them to share with your friends on Facebook.

We confess to being extremely impressed by Microsoft's announcements today, particularly solid given the lack of a new hardware revision. Project Natal has the opportunity to bring gaming to a whole class of non-gamers in some ways even moreso than the Wii controller did; many would-be consumers still list confusing controllers and control schemes as being a barrier to entry to the video game ouvre. For existing gamers, the new social integrations with Facebook, Twitter and last.fm bring added value to an already powerful social platform in Xbox Live. It's a smart move and the chosen services are tops in their respective classes right now, allowing the Xbox 360 to extend its reach and pull in social identities of users that otherwise would remain separate and siloed. The news is also yet another stark reminder of how "convergence" is about catering to consumers wherever they are, be it on the web, on a game console or on a mobile device — the latter of which Microsoft will be addressing more directly with the Zune marketplace coming to Xbox Live to provide mobile content services to the forthcoming Zune HD.

We'll definitely be looking forward to seeing new titles coming out that will take advantage of Natal, and of course getting our eventually Minority Report-style controller-less mitts on the social networking features when they roll out this fall.

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