Remember the Project NATAL E3 2009 tech demo with that kid named Milo? Later titled “Milo & Kate”, the “game” has seen much rumor and speculation concerning whether it was a real game or not. Which would be kind of weird if it wasn’t, considering it was a flagship highlight of the Kinect and what it could do with more “real” games (i.e., not mini-game collections).
However, especially after Microsoft’s E3 2010 Press Conference, where the Milo demo was no where to be seen, people were really questioning whether it would be released at all.
Now conflicting reports have been given by Microsoft regarding whether Milo & Kate is actually a game or not. Phil Spencer, Vice President of Microsoft Game Studios, said the following, which suggests it is just a tech demo after all and not a full game. And that most of the technology ended up in Kinectimals.
“Milo and Kate, the technology is stuff that we’re still incubating back in the studios,” said Spencer.
“I think Lionhead has always been a great place, and the nice thing about Peter [Molyneux] as creative director in Europe is you start to see some of those ideas around Milo also showing up in other places, so Kinectimals is actually done at Frontier.
“But Peter being so close has actually been able to take many of the learnings that Lionhead has done and help other teams, and when you see the interaction between the girl and the animal on stage you can see similarities to stuff we were working on with Milo, so we start with experiments and they may turn into games themselves. We may not have had anything to announce today with Milo but understand that those investments in creative research show up in many places.”
But then you had Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg state the following, suggesting that the game is indeed real and will be coming later:
“Project Milo absolutely continues in development at Lionhead Studios,” he told Kotaku. “It is just not a product we plan to bring to market this holiday. The team at Lionhead has always been a center of innovation and will continue to deliver against that charter.”
To make things even less clear, you have the creator of the Milo & Kate demo (and the Fable series) himself, Peter Molyneux, who has said that Milo & Kate will be “re-introduced” in July:
“So, it is in development, it still is in development.,” Molyneux told Kotaku when asked about the whereabouts of the game, and why it wasn’t on the showfloor at E3 2010.
“We’re continuing to develop it; it was decided not to show it here at E3. You know what I’m like, I would show it every day of the week. And actually, you when I look at it, I think there’s some smart reasons why we didn’t show it.
“Now, it is pretty amazing, it is actually on show to celebrities. But it is amazing, it’s ten times more amazing then you think it is. You can see it in July if you go to Oxford. Because I’m doing a talk at TEDGlobal on Milo in July.”
So what do you think? Real or not real? Can Molyneux be trusted or is it all just a “game” at this point? (lame-pun intended).
Here is video of the original Milo & Kate demo from the Microsoft E3 2009 Press Conference.
And here is the E3 2010 demo of Kinectimals which uses some of the Milo technology.
Via VG247