Today CMP announced that Microsoft will be presenting a keynote address during the upcoming Game Developers Conference 2008, which is set to take place February 18-22, 2008. The keynote will be presented by John Schappert, the Corporate Vice President of Live, Software and Services for the Interactive Entertainment Business. The address is entitled "A Future Wide Open: Unleashing the Creative Community" and, in it, John Schappert will explain how the Xbox 360 platform will begin to democratize game development, opening up the industry for developers of all sizes.

In addition to the big news that's coming out of the Microsoft camp at GDC, Nintendo is also set to have a strong presence during the conference. As announced today on GDC Executive Director Jamil Moledina's blog, there are a trio of Nintendo-related talks scheduled for the event. Takao Sawano, the project lead of Wii Fit, will explain the process of creating a brand new interface for the home console and Takashi Aoyama, the team leader for Nintendo's Network Group, will discuss the creation and development of the Wii Menu and the upcoming WiiWare project, which is Nintendo's original downloadable game service. Finally, Masahiro Sakurai will be speaking at the event with a postmortem of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which will be the first postmortem of a major 2008 title.