The Microsoft press event recently rumored to be taking place just before GDC has been confirmed by Major Nelson on his latest podcast. "Next week I'm going to be down in San Francisco. We're 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. Just telling you guys, you're going to be pretty happy when you hear all the news, that's all I can say." said Nelson towards the end of the podcast.
The rumor originated in a tweet from Spike TV's Geoff Keighley in reply to a question from another Twitter user. That same user has since claimed that both Keighley and Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg have confirmed to him that the event is taking place on Thursday 24th. Games rumored to debut at the event include Gears of War: Kinect, Forza 4 and a remake of the original Halo.
With no official press release yet, it is unknown if anything shown at the event will be under a non-disclosure agreement with a public unveiling at GDC, or if we'll be hearing the news as the press sees it this Thursday.
Update: Twisted Pixel have confirmed via Twitter that they will be showing their newly announced Kinect title, The Gunstringer, at the event.
Robot Entertainment are teasing an announcement on their website. Their unannounced project, Game 2.0, could well be published by Microsoft like their RTS, Age of Empires online, and is thus a likely candidate to be unveiled at the event. The company were created by founders of Ensemble after it's break-up, and were responsible for maintaining and updating the Xbox 360 RTS Halo Wars until 2010.