Hands up, who remembers Project Milo? If you do, you probably had a keen interest in the world of gaming back in mid-2009, as that's when Xbox and Lionhead Studios unveiled Milo to the world for the first time at E3 of that year.
When Project Milo was first demonstrated alongside the original Kinect for Xbox 360, it was presented to us as a game where you could have real, lifelike conversations and interactions with a boy called Milo, demonstrated at E3 in a video that was so impressive, it generated massive mainstream attention for the game and the Kinect.
You can watch the HD version of Project Milo up above (timestamped), along with a quick snippet below:
Sadly, following this extremely popular unveiling at E3, it was all downhill for Milo from there. The game didn't make an appearance at the following year's event, and Xbox's Aaron Greenberg ended up stating at the time that it was a "technology demo" that Xbox wasn't planning to bring to market.
Nevertheless, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux ended up showing off a live, working version of Project Milo at a TED Talk in 2010. You can watch that for yourself down below as well - it was an intriguing watch for sure, but definitely not as impressive as the E3 snippet we'd seen in 2009, and unfortunately we'd never lay eyes on the title again.
With Project Milo never making it to market, some of the features that were designed for it were instead incorporated into Fable: The Journey for Kinect, which released to a mixed reception back in late 2012.
It wasn't a happy ending for Milo then, but he's still taken his place in Xbox history. That E3 2009 demonstration truly convinced a lot of people that the future was right around the corner, and that the Kinect could be the gateway to experiences that would change gaming forever. Although that didn't quite prove to be the case, Peter and his team were showing impressive ambition over at Lionhead Studios - but with a project that was just too ahead of its time.