So what was Bethesda's big announcement, anyway?

Was it Rogue Warrior?

If that is the hideous looking generic modern shooter from Zombie, yes.

Their big announcement was that they are already designing TES5 in parallel to the current real work on Fallout 3. OK, well that’s probably not what their marketeers would say, but that’s what I considered the big news. I heard it on the Next-Gen.biz podcast (26:00 min mark). The rest of the podcast is a snoozefest.

Edit: Oh right they also said no boxed version of Knights of the Nine for 360, only marketplace.