Kotaku‘s reporting that the plug’s been pulled on Lionhead Studios’ ambitious Project Milo for Kinect. The undertaking–also referred to as Milo & Kate–was the jewel of Microsoft’s 2009 E3 presentation, containing the most forward-looking of the motion-gaming ideas during the press conference.
If it’s true, the news about Milo comes as a bit of a shock. The development on the title has had a confusing history, with Microsoft saying it had been cancelled, ony to clarify that it had only been postpone. When I spoke to Molyneux more than a month ago, I made a point to ask kim about it. He confidently said that Project Milo was moving ahead and was excited about the possibilities the endeavor could create:
What’s going on with Milo? Different reports have been heard about whether it’s a tech demo or it’s an actual game. What should we expect?
The thing about Milo, it’s an incredibly ambitious title. About three weeks ago, I gave a talk at TED and showed how the project’s progressing. I actually showed the first hour-experience; I had to compress it down to 18 minutes because TED’s very strict about talkers. You know, they literally have a sniper gun on you if you’re overrun. And, so, we are progressing the title, there’s a full team working on it. It’s definitely–the way it’s crafted, the story that we’re telling in it–is different than anything that we’ve ever done before or anybody’s ever done before. I prefer to call it a tech demo so that when don’t get people all too hyped up on when is it going to be released. But for me, Milo is alive in this incredible story. This is the thing that wasn’t covered in TED: if you have got a character in a story that feels alive and notices you as an individual, then it, for me completely rewrites all storytelling abilities now. I mean, if when you open this comic, this character looked you in the eyes and said “You know, I think you could be a superhero,” that would change everything, wouldn’t it? Just doing that would change everything, and that’s what we’re creating. It’s something which is not just about Kinect, it’s not just about the ability to talk to Milo, it’s not just about the ability for Milo to see what you’re wearing, it’s about the ability to tell a story in a completely different light.
(More on Techland: Milo Is Real, Has His Head in the Digital Cloud: Peter Molyneux’s TED Talk)
Kotaku’s source reports that the underlying tech from Project Milo will be repurposed in a Fable-branded game, so there’s a chance that we may yet see some of Molyneux’s innovative ideas come to light/