After a decade in obscurity, we find out what happened to Lionhead Studio's annoying E3 2009 Kinect Demo.
If you're not familiar with Project Milo, it was demonstrated as an artificial intelligence capable of directly communicating with people through speech and visual recognition via Microsoft's Kinect hardware, then known as Project Natal.
There have been several debates over the years speculating the legitimacy of the project, with many presuming the concept was a fabrication to exhibit Kinect's features. We can confirm however, that Milo (in some form) was in fact genuine.
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| Project Milo. Look at that shit-head. |
We spoke to co-founder of the now defunct Lionhead Studios, infamous Peter Molyneux, for clarification on Project Milo's current state.
PM: "I have no recollection of this Project Milo you speak of."
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| Molyneux speaking in front of photos of Project Milo. |
EE: Now Mr Molyneux, we're aware of your history of promising things that were impossible and then denying those statements to cover yourself, but you can't possibly pretend Project Milo didn't exist?
PM: "I may have promised that 1996's Syndicate Wars could play DVD's inside the game's Billboard's long before computer DVD drives existed. I may have also said that in Fable if an acorn fell to the ground it would generate into a tree, but I'm not a liar! I have no recollection of what you're talking about."
EE: Lionhead showed a demo for Kinect during Microsoft's E3 2009 presentation consisting of a loser 10 year old boy who was capable of talking to a real life woman. It was a project you were literally at the helm at!
PM: "Hmm, I do remember taking motion capture of a ten year old named Milo back in 2009 to simulate fake software for Microsoft. Oh yes, that's right! That was all just fraudulent bullshit. We had Milo in our basement's Mo-Cap Studio to detail realistic movements for the project, but it was never real. Just classic Molyneux Spew."
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| Ten year old Milo in action. |
"Milo was so excited to be part of a real video game and none of us had the heart to tell him that it was never going to come to fruition. I don't think anyone has seen Milo since the day of the motion capture. We left everything behind so quickly to move into our new office after E3 that year."
"God I hated that old office. Doors would become stuck and if no one else was there you'd be trapped over-night. Particularly in the Mo-Cap studio. No one could hear you while trapped down there. *laughs* Wait a minute... Oh FUCK!!!!!!!"
