After finishing up work on 2001's Black & White, Lionhead Studios got to work on an experimental project under the codename Dimitri before shifting to Project X. It wasn't until Microsoft unveiled the Kinect, an Xbox 360 peripheral that would allow people to use their body as a controller, akin to a remote-free Wii, that it was revealed Project X would change its name again to Project Milo, or Milo & Kate, and be interconnected to the new peripheral. Things turned sour and the project was never fully released, though.
Speaking at Nordic Game 2025, Molyneux shared following the acquisition of Lionhead, he was made aware of Project Natal, which was the codename for the Kinect. He saw it as a crazy idea dreamt up by a very passionate Alex Kipman, who he described as making him "look boring and passionless."
"It was run by this brilliant bloke called Alex Kipman. Makes me look boring and passionless – he had ten times more passion than I had. He had this demo of this device, and when he showed me this demo, it could see people's faces. He said, 'it can do voice recognition', and it had a massive field-of-view so it could see this whole room."
Beyond the fact he found it incredible even though he saw it as crazy, cracks started to form pretty fast. Firstly, he didn't like the idea of making a party game or the idea of moving all around the room to play games, as Molyneux said "I want to sit back, I want to smoke what I smoke, and I want to drink what I want to drink, and I don't want to prance around like a twat'." So, he went created his own demo of what he believed the tech should be used for.
But, the lack of interest on Molyneux's part, or their differing views on how the technology should be used, those weren't what really killed Milo & Kate, The "death blow" was the marketing of the Kinect itself. Instead of making it a gaming device, it was more used to be a party device that people just didn't really care about after 10-20 minutes. The novelty of it wore off fast and it didn't help that the sensors weren't the best, either.
"Then, the death blow of Milo, which still breaks my heart to this day, was that it was decided that Kinect shouldn't be a gaming device: it should be a party device. You should play a sports game with it, or dancing games with it. So, it just didn't fit into the Microsoft portfolio, and unfortunately the project was cancelled."
Perhaps -- nay, most certainly -- it's possible now to make something that is basically Milo & Kate, considering how AI is going, but frankly, that would be an endeavor that would quickly be forgotten. Right now, Molyenux is working on Masters of Albion, a god game at 22cans.