Of all major game publishers, Nintendo is the one most associated with bizarre controls. From the Virtual Boy to the Wiimote, Nintendo's history is studded with unorthodox new ways to play games — some far more successful than others. But one of the biggest attempts to change the way we interact with games came from a Nintendo competitor, and while it didn’t work out as planned, it paved the way for more accessible games in the long run.
On November 4, 2010, Microsoft released the Kinect, a controller for the Xbox 360 that uses a camera to track players’ movements and translate them into games. The Kinect was first revealed as Project Natal at E3 2009. Of the demos shown off, the most memorable is Project Milo, a simulation game by Peter Molyneux’s Lionhead Studios. Project Milo’s demo featured a player interacting with a child on screen, who was guided by the game’s artificial intelligence to react to the player’s words and movements realistically. As has so often been the case with Molyneux’s games, the big promises of Project Milo never came to light, and the game was eventually canceled.
