Microsoft is bringing home ComicCon the way they brought home E3, it seems. Xbox Live will feature all the media, video, and demos released at this year's event, which sounds like it is very video game heavy, for some reason. Good news for us. Click read more for the full Bringing It home info.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN DIEGO — July 23, 2008 — Horror and comedy often come together on the show floor at Comic-Con International, just never like this. Microsoft Corp. today announced that a set of original short film pilots will be coming to Xbox LIVE this fall, free to all members around the world. The unique concept of masters of horror taking on comedy, conceived by filmmaker James Gunn (“Slither,” “Dawn of the Dead”) and producer Peter Safran (“Scary Movie,” “Meet the Spartans,” “Disaster Movie”), will see some of the world’s greatest horror directors bring their comedic visions to life. Microsoft is teaming up with Safran Digital Group to produce these exclusive shorts.

In case you missed the fiasco, Bungie was all set to reveal a new Halo title at E3. Just before the countdown ended though, MS put the kibosh on it and forbid Bungie from revealing it. then Mattrick himself did reveal that MS had Bungie working on an as-yet-unannounced Halo game. This is the interview where he does just that. You can see in his face that he thinks maybe he should not have mentioned it.

MS officially announced DirectX 11 at it's Gamefest developer conference, in case you missed it. It will be exclusive to Windows Vista, of course, and future Windows versions. This time around though, DX11 will be compatible with DX10 hardware. They promise there will not be anywhere near as much of a break as there was between DX9 and DX10. Hopefully MS holds true on this promise.

Dean Takahashi spoke with EA CEO John Riccitiello, and he praised his own staff for their recent development efforts. He also spoke about MS, Nintendo, and Sony, and their respective consoles. He admits that up until this year, EA was slanted more towards Xbox360 and PS3. He said they are trying to correct that now that the Wii is so popular. The Nintendo DS as well! He even speaks a bit about the new WiiMotion Plus.

Well, sorry for all of you Alan Wake fans out there, but it seems the report that Alan Wake would be showing at TGS 2008 was incorrect. The report was actually from last year, and the contest winner has already been added to the game, supposedly. We though it was too late in the development to add a whole new character. Guess we were right. Remedy says they do not know when the game will show and must speak with MS on the show schedule. We think Remedy at least owes us some new screenshots.

The new Major Nelson show is out, and he talks about the new Xbox360 OS. The good news is that the new Avatar system is not necessary, although the OS replacement is. Also, anyone who purchased gamer pictures or themes will still be able to use them. Great news, we were worried about that. He even talks about game installs, claims its pretty "slick." It has some other info on the new OS, so give it a listen.

"Your existing gamer pictures and themes still work. They're not going away." Pretty good news I guess, for some.

CVG has posted an interview with Rare's Senior Director Mark Betteridge to celebrate Banjo's 10th anniversary in Europe. Rich Cousins, the producer of the latest Banjo game, joins the interview as well. From the beginning, Batteridge makes it clear that he wants to turn Banjo into the Microsoft bear, as it were. He thinks the "time is right for Banjo to be a mascot character for the Xbox360." Without even having one game released? Interesting. What about Master Chief?

Harmonix, the company behind Rock Band, has stated that Microsoft have been great partners. Apparently, this partnership was partially responsible for the release of Rock Band 2 on Xbox360 first. The lead designer of Rock band, Dan Teasdale, said Harmonix is "not really delaying the other stuff. It's just that Microsoft have been such great partners, that we've been able to release it early on 360." This is good news for Xbox630 fans, hopefully Sony will be just as good. Above all, we hope that gamers will not have to purchase instruments again.

One of the more anticipated Xbox360 dash update features is the ability to install games to the HDD to decrease load times. Well, according to Gamespot, it will decrease the loading times by up to 30%, wow! This is from Microsoft internal testing, of course, but even a 20% increase is great. A game the size of Devil may Cry 4 took about 10 minutes to install, which is average we suppose.

Many of you asked why Alan Wake was missing from E3 2008. Well, maybe it is because Microsoft has plans for the title. If you check this contest page, gamers can try for a shot to be digitally inserted into the game during a trip to the Tokyo Game Show 2009. This tells us the game will be showing there, at the least. Then again, if the game is still early enough to digitally add an entire character, we do not hold out much hope for a 2009 release. Rumor mill for now.