So you've already had our , which means that in the interests of fairness (and, you know, doing our jobs to a proper and complete degree), it's time for Microsoft. Now finally back on its feet after a very rocky new-gen start, MS is in a position to really impress this year. Brand new games were teased at the 2014 show, and we know that one or two big franchises are due to return sooner rather than later. But there's got to be more than that. So what will it be?

Click on, and we'll tell you what we expect. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll laugh again, but all being well there will at least be zero reference to putting TV in your TV so that you can... You know the rest. And make sure to check back throughout the week for our run-downs on Nintendo and the third-parties too. It will be great!

If you're playing E3 Bingo at home, this is your free square. With coming by the end of the year, we're bound to see some kind of gameplay at Microsoft's conference. But that's not where the Halo news will end. First, there'll be some kind of apology for the launch of the Master Chief Collection, which will be instantly hand-waved away by explaining how much better is now.

Microsoft will also stand behind the collection as a platform for Halo, announcing new plans for the Halo Channel, and maybe the addition of Reach to the MCC. And Halo Wars, if Microsoft gets really desperate.

You can already pick up the Xbox One for less than a PS4, thanks to various retailer bundles and promotions, but E3 will signal an official offer of ‘increased value’. Now, we deliberately made that vague because… an actual price cut is fairly unlikely. What we expect to see is some kind of juicy ‘trade in your Xbox 360 for big bucks off the Xbox One’ style offer.

See, a lot of people still haven’t moved on from the last generation, and Microsoft wants to keep its 360 players in the family. So, 18 months since XO’s nightmarish launch, expect to see MS make a big play for the folk thinking about upgrading. Because if Microsoft doesn’t do it, Sony definitely will.

This is followed by the new Gears of War: Cogs of Destiny card game coming to mobile and iOS this Fall. But don't confuse that with Gears of War: Destiny of the Cog, an MMO shooter that ties into the new live-action Gears of War series exclusive to Netflix (starring J.K. Simmons as a man who is angry).

Then there's the Gears of War breakfast cereal, and the Gears of War lawn maintenance kit, and the...

Forza Motorsport 6 will be a glossy act of reparation in some ways, walking back the damage done by the transaction models and content disparities of Forza 5. Beyond that, it’ll mark another round of actual human beings saying ‘drivatar’ without bursting at a molecular level.

Oh, and kudos to the poor trailer-making folks that have to think of yet another way to show cool cars doing their thing. There’s only so many ways to swoop over pearlescent paint jobs and jiggle the camera as a Nissan GT-R roars by. Not that we don’t enjoy that sort of thing.

Yes, we get it: Minecraft is a big deal, and Microsoft needs to show off what it’s got planned for its shiny new billion-dollar purchase. That won't change the fact that the Minecraft booth will continue to be a bigger wasteland than Pripyat.

Still, that exclusive aardvark will be adorable.

Take a sandbox game. Now make it the size of the Milky Way galaxy. That's the basic premise of . With that in mind, Microsoft will give the floor to series creator David Braben to drum up hype for Elite: Dangerous - and in doing so, accidentally spoil another much-anticipated space epic set for release in 2015. See, he's a big sci-fi fan and knows some people working on Star Wars.

Braben will play up the freedom to do almost anything in the vastness of Elite: Dangerous' universe, including the creation of a galactic Empire and the piloting of various starfighters. "You can even explore a player-driven narrative in which you recover the melted mask of a previous leader, resulting in..." - and just when Braben's about to inadvertently spoil the ending of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Disney's lawyers will yank him offstage by cane in 1950s cartoon fashion.

Listen, we're going to hear a lot of ‘The Nights’ by Avicii at E3. Given the number of montages during the show, it’s a statistical certainty. Also, all the Woodkid songs are taken.

Microsoft’s independent game montage will be different, however, in that it’ll claim exclusivity over several games both for Windows 10 and Xbox One. And, going by recent ID@Xbox releases like Nero and Lifeless Planet, it will demonstrate a need for weird, not-quite-great games that didn't make it past Sony’s seemingly stricter curation. With any luck, might even be a game featuring ‘The Nights’ on its soundtrack. Corporate view of the zeitgeist, nailed!

After a few less-than-successful attempts at reviving prior classics (like Conker and Perfect Dark) and a few less-than-successful attempts at creating new franchises (like Kameo), Microsoft has shunted Rare off into whatever circle of hell requires its denizens to work on Xbox Avatar clothes for the rest of eternity.

But no, finally, Rare has its chance at redemption, showing up at E3 with a new entry in the nostalgia-inducing Battletoads franchise. Now, the frustrated clerks at GameStop will actually have a copy of the game, so please stop crank-calling them.

If we've learned anything from the announcement of a new Phantom Dust game at E3 2014 and its almost immediate delay/cancellation (we're still not sure which), it's that Microsoft is committed to almost giving fans what they want by rebooting cherished franchises that they definitely sort of remember. In keeping with that mission, expect the company to announce the return of Blinx, Vince, and Brute Force through beautifully pre-rendered cutscenes that tell you nothing about the games in question, but really grab your interest.

That way, when the projects are canceled within months, and leaked footage shows they don't look anything like the trailers you saw, you'll be even trigued than you were at the start. Wait, actually, 'confused' is probably the word we’re looking for.

From mandatory peripheral to dirty little secret, the Kinect has apparently become press conference poison as far as Microsoft is concerned, so don't expect it to exactly be a show headliner.

In fact, you probably shouldn't expect to see at all, outside a few snapshots of it sitting next to an Xbox One, before it's immediately covered up by a picture of Master Chief's helmet and Lara Croft getting chased by something.

It’s a year of great potential for Microsoft. Having shifted its mantra from ‘TV, TV, TV’ to ‘games, games, games’, the company will now surely try to make good on last year’s promise of having more exclusives and more reasons to play.

It will do that partly by showcasing last year’s teases in proper depth. Scalebound will be an incredibly pretty grab at the Monster Hunter market, with slick Platinum combat,, while Crackdown will crank up the neon and deliver some serious kinetic spectacle.

Interest will immediately wane when the presenter brings up the game's companion TV program, and shows off a three-minute trailer that does its best to coherently mix 24 with Agents of Shield. The trailer will be followed by several seconds of silence, and the audience will clap politely once the Defiance flashbacks stop.

Microsoft's Games with Gold rewards program is like the little sibling to Sony's Instant Game Collection on PlayStation Plus: try as it might, it can't live up to the standard set by its superior senior. In either case, free games every month are nothing to sneeze at, but where Sony consistently offers new releases on the house, Microsoft seems insistent on lagging years behind the gaming zeitgeist.

To further cement its commitment to offering the best games from three years ago for free, a Microsoft representative will excitedly mention plans to bring Far Cry 3, Borderlands 2, and The Walking Dead (Season One) to Games with Gold in 2015. The camera will pan to an audience that can appreciate both the timeless quality and relative age of these titles, including a close-up of a fan who bought all of them at full price on release day shedding a single, bitter tear.

New realities are the future, and the future is now. Or rather, the future is Q4 2015/Q1 2016. Valve, Oculus and Sony are all poised to move into the burgeoning virtual reality market with their own headsets, and Microsoft would do well to not be left behind. HoloLens compatibility with Xbox One would go a long way to making that happen.

Now, that being said, we can’t imagine that such an announcement - if it’s to be made - will be more than conceptual in nature. The HoloLens was in very early stages when it was demonstrated to press last year, and the fact that it works using augmented reality instead of virtual reality means a whole other slew of problem, solutions and technology that needs to be developed. Still, if Microsoft wants this new technology to take off, getting early excitement from technophile gamers would be a very smart foot in the door.

Once upon a time, Microsoft was pretty good about backward compatibility, taking the time to make <(i>some) Xbox games playable on Xbox 360. Then it realized that good lord is that a lot of work, and so stopped, and basically just hoped you kept your old systems lying around. (Which, in fairness, we did.)

Now that the Xbox family has more than enough older titles to justify it, Microsoft will announce a streaming game service similar to PlayStation Now. Pay a certain amount each month and you’ll be able to access Xbox games you didn’t catch the first time around, like Breakdown, Crimson Skies and, of course, Phantom Dust.