SANTA MONICA, California — With a focus on blockbuster games coming out this year and with few bigger surprises than the announcement of yet another version of the Xbox 360, Microsoft kicked off this year's Electronics Entertainment Expo on Tuesday night with a confident video game showcase set in the unlikely location of the local public high school's outdoor amphitheatre.

"This is the greatest holiday lineup in video game history," Microsoft's Peter Moore told several thousand reporters and members of the gaming industry sitting on circular Xbox cushions laid out in the concrete bowl of Santa Monica High School, one of those public schools fancy enough to have two gyms. "We have all the games you want to play — right here, right now."

Moore talked about the final three months of 2004 and of the 11 million combined copies of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," "Madden 2005" and "Halo 2" that made that 90-day period the biggest-selling holiday season in American gaming's last decade. He said a similar "perfect storm" is coming again this year, and emphasized that sequels to those three games would only collectively appear on the Xbox 360 (no "Halo" on PS3; of those three only "Madden" will be on the Wii).

Moore showed the audience the second trailer for October's "GTA IV," projected onto the large screen, and boasted that only the 360 will host two exclusive add-on episodes of the game, set for downloadable release by next Spring.

To push "Madden," the company had New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush score a virtual touchdown on Microsoft executive Jeff Bell.

To promote "Halo 3," Moore closed the show with a new trailer that rapidly zipped through scenes from developer Bungie's single-player campaign.

What Moore didn't do was drop any surprise game announcements on the crowd that would excite hard-core gamers. In years past he'd rolled up his sleeves to reveal announcements for the release date for "Halo 2" and the day-and-date-with-PS3 release of "GTA IV." This year he had nothing quite like that up his sleeve: Before the conference he joked to MTV News that he didn't because he had run out of tattoo-able limbs that Microsoft PR would be comfortable with him flashing onstage.

Still, there were twists. One was the announcement of a special "Halo 3" edition of the Xbox 360, the stand-out feature being that it is painted Master Chief green. This announcement was received quietly by a crowd certainly still mindful of the release of the special black Elite edition of the 360 released in March (see "Xbox 360 Is Back In Black With Roomier Elite Console"). Little surprise then, that the quiet was broken with an audience member yelling, "I just bought my Elite!"

The company also showed a new Xbox 360 controller shaped like a game-show buzzer. Four of them will be packaged later this year with an Xbox 360 exclusive version of the pop-culture trivia game "Scene It?" The controller is similar to the device released for the PS2 in Europe in recent years and coming to the U.S later this year for the Sony-published game-show video game "Buzz!"

The briefing hosted the debuts of MTV's own "Rock Band," the new game from the makers of "Guitar Hero," which allows players to jam with not just guitar-shaped controllers, but a drum kit and a microphone. Moore played bass with three of the "Rock Band" creators to rock through a Hives song that the Xbox executive interrupted twice by accidentally rocking out on the guitar controller's pause button. The Strokes, Nirvana, Black Sabbath and the Who were all cited as bands included in the game's soundtrack.

The event featured gameplay demonstrations of Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed," Activision's modern warfare first-person shooter "Call of Duty 4," and the now-with-motorcycles "Project Gotham Racing." All were touted as fall releases, as were role-playing games "Mass Effect" and "Lost Odyssey" as well as new "Mario Party"-style mini-game compilation "Viva Pinata: Party Animals."

Other platforms did get mentioned. A showcase of 2007 Windows games was highlighted with an onstage demonstration of "Gears of War" for the PC, a title that will include five chapters not in the Xbox 360 version. One of them features a boss battle with a creature that appears in the 360 version only in non-playable moments and is far larger than anything "Gears" players have fought before; it essentially resembles a trunk-less alien elephant that stands on its hind legs and blasts the player with massive machine guns mounted on its arms and atop its neck and head. The game will feature a new multiplayer mode and new Xbox Live achievements.

Microsoft's competing platforms got referenced as well. The PS3 and Wii were called by name twice each early in the show when Moore boasted that, since the new machines' respective launches, the 360 has sold 18.1 million games while the Wii has moved 8.8 million and the PS3 4 million.

Highlight reels were also shown of Xbox Live Arcade titles (largest cheer: the Bungie-developed first-person shooter "Marathon 2: Durandal") and for the Xbox Live video marketplace, which will include content from Disney-owned movie studios.

To emphasize the spirit of the venue, the Xbox event was bookended by performances from the band Corporeal, a five-member group formed in Libertyville, Illinois, by high school friends. Their YouTube jam of the "Halo" theme song got them noticed by Microsoft. "We got this gig two weeks ago," co-founder Dave Verlee told MTV News backstage before the show. Violinist Hannah Stuart said she was supposed to be conducting an orchestra at a musical festival instead of playing the Xbox gig, but couldn't resist the invitation. She is classically trained but said she felt Bach and Beethoven would understand: "They were revolutionaries themselves."

The self-imposed rule to focus on Microsoft's 2007 year in gaming was only broken twice during the 90-minute presentation. Once it was for a quick mention of future titles "Too Human," "Fable 2," "Halo Wars" and the next "Banjo-Kazooie"; the other was when Moore cued a trailer for "Resident Evil 5," which seemed to feature horror in an African village. Moore said a new "RE5" trailer will be downloadable on the Xbox 360 on July 25.

Otherwise, the talk was all 2007 and a roster of games that Moore and company hope will shine more brightly than whatever Sony and Nintendo are about to showcase on Wednesday morning. "Our cards are on the table," he said. "This is who we are and what we will deliver to you this holiday."

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