Xbox Gaming in South Africa

Xbox LIVE's Larry Hyrb revealed in his weekly podcast over the weekend that Microsoft is set to hold a pre-GDC press event in San Francisco tomorrow, which will apparently contain a bunch of "cool news" and announcements.

"Next week I'm going to be down in San Francisco. We are having an invite-only press event that we're going to have some cool news that I'm not quite fully briefed on, but we have a lot of news that we're going to be announcing," said Hryb [via Examiner]. "Just telling you guys, you're going to be really happy when you hear all the news, that's all I can say."

That's all Hyrb could say, but not Epic Games' executive producer Rod Fergusson, who tweeted this morning that Gears of War 3 will make some headlines tomorrow as well.

A big Gears 3 announcement hits tomorrow!

Short and sweet, but it doesn't give much away. If we'd have to take a guess though, it's likely a release date for the Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta, or perhaps the release date for the retail game itself [Update: MS has just announced a 20 September release date], which was delayed from April until Q3 2011.

Regarding what other announcements Microsoft might have planned, perhaps we'll finally hear more about Crytek's Xbox 360 exclusive, Codename: Kingdoms, or the upcoming racing sequel Forza 4. Or, just maybe, a confirmation of the hotly rumoured Halo: Combat Evolved HD.

Already confirmed is Twisted Pixel's Gunstringer, which will be on show, and we should see more on the recently announced Avatar Kinect, which launches in April/May.

Until tomorrow then.