Here's what will probably be shown at Microsoft's press conference

Microsoft's big spring press conference will be held at 2:00PM today somewhere in Tokyo. The e-mail about the briefing didn't give any hints as to what will be shown. I seriously checked to see if they'd done anything clever, like made all the first letters of their sentences spell "I-T-A-G-A-K-I" for instance, but found nothing.

However, it just so happens that Famitsu managed to get a bunch of exclusive Xbox 360 previews last week. These are likely candidates to take up at least a small portion of the press conference.

Here's a summary of the two biggest games, with links to Famitsu.com where images have been posted following the mag's release last week.

NINETY-NINE NIGHTS II

I remember being wowed when seeing first footage of Ninety-Nine Nights at its Roppongi Hills theatrical premier in mid 2005. Unfortunately, the footage shown at the event was all CG, and the final version ended up feeling like a lesser Dynasty Warriors clone.

The sequel has some clear differences from the original. The original was developed as a tag between the then new studio Q Entertainment and Korean developer Phantagram, with Microsoft serving as publisher. The sequel is being published by Q Entertainment itself and is being developed by Lost Odyssey developer Feel Plus.

There may be nothing relating the original and the sequel as far as story goes. The sequel takes place in a completely separate world from the original. You play as Gren, a top rate knight in from the kingdom of Goriate. Joining him is Sefia, queen of the holy land of Orphia. Screenshots confirm that Gren is playable. Sefia's playable state isn't clear at the moment. The original N3, you'll recall, had seven playable characters.

Gameplay is, once again, all about combat with massive numbers of enemies in a mission-based format. The game is said to feature improvements in all areas, including graphics, animation, and action. You'll now be able to better build up your character as you fight. This could lead to added variations for your attacks, the magazine speculates.

New to the gameplay are gimmicks related to the area of play. One example mentioned by Famitsu is the ability to topple a tower, burying enemies beneath it.

Orb Attacks and Orb Sparks return from the original. Triggering these special attacks makes your character invincible and super-powerful for a limited time. While the original title required that you collect red orbs from fallen foes in order to build up your Orb Attack gauge, Famitsu doesn't specify the method for building the gauge in the sequel.

Ninety Nine Nights II is 50% complete and is scheduled for release some time in 2009.

MAGNA CARTA 2

While Ninety Nine Nights is now in Japanese hands, Magna Carta II is, as one might expect, being developed by Korea's Soft Max. It will be published by Namco Bandai in 2009.

In this RPG, you take control of Juto in an all new world. Having lost his memory, Juto leads a quiet life on an island, but finds himself thrust into an internal conflict when when the Northern Army invades. Juto joins the Southern Army, something that leads to the awakening of his tremendous power... or something to that effect.

The characters you see at the Famitsu.com page -- even the girl with the shapely body -- are designed by Kim Hyung-tae, character designer from the original.

The game's battle system is encounter based. You can see your enemies ahead of time on the field. The jump to battle is apparently instantaneous, with the game switching into battle mode right on the spot with no screen clear.

Combat is a fusion of action and turn-based. You take control of one character in your party of what looks like at most three (I'm not totally sure if this is the max). Other characters are controlled by AI, but you're free to switch your leader character to one of the party members on the fly. All characters have unique abilities, and all see changes to their battle style depending on the equipped weapon.

As with the original, the game makes use of "Kankyou-kan," or "Environmental Sense." Via this, the game's fields of have a direct effect on your battle. The sequel will supposedly see improvements in this area over the original.

Also featured in the game is a new "Chain System." Details are scarce, but this apparently has something to do with your characters forming chain attacks when you switch leader characters out

OTHER STUFF

Aside from that, I'm going to make the rather unimpressive prediction that Sega will share a release date for Virtual On Oratorio Tangram. The game was recently confirmed as having passed its testing phase.

I'm also going to expect some form of showing for Dead Rising 2 and Lost Planet 2. The former, while confirmed for Japan, was more of a Western announcement. The latter, while shown in an Xbox Live Marketplace trailer, hasn't had its time in the spotlight at a press conference.

We'll find out exactly what's shown in a few hours! I'll be live blogging here and at IGN Xbox 360, so be sure and check back! The content between the two sites should be similar, although if I get a lot of visitors to this site it will probably explode, so IGN Xbox 360 will be the better place to go.