The Game Developers Conference will be starting shortly, and GameDrop will be reporting from all its corners. This year, the conference is taking place in San Francisco, much to the delight of the humans who can't stand its usual home, San Jose.

And this year, the focus may be placed more on more on the games themselves. Previous GDC events concerned themselves more with development tools, programming techniques, and discussions of game theory and design, but with the Electronic Entertainment Expo in shambles, it may be that GDC will become the new venue for companies to show off games.

Already, Microsoft is planning to use the event to highlight Forza 2, Fable 2, Mass Effect, Age of Conan, and Shadowrun, as well as a host of new Xbox 360 Live titles...and it's already announced a brand-new and improved 512MB memory card that will allow players to tote around their gamer profiles and Xbox Live games.

This may be, in other words, a brand-new GDC.