Milo was “never a product” and “was never announced as a game,” Microsoft are saying. Alex Kipman, Microsoft’s director of incubation and creator of Kinect said, while talking to GI.biz: “Milo was never announced as a game. Milo was a sandbox. In this world of creating experiences I used voice, gestures, identity together. Milo was the sandbox which allowed us to define how to do these experiences, and what you saw was a transformational experience where you got a level of emotional connection unlike anything you had seen before.”

He says he feels Kinectimals is the game that retains Milo’s spirit.

“Now, where has Milo gone? It was never really a product, I will tell you that the technology developed in that sandbox, and by the way we continue to develop technologies in that sandbox, has migrated pretty closely to what you see in a game called Kinectimals.

“Kinectimals is about creating an emotional, deep relationship between you and this tiger cub. It uses identity, knows who you are. It actually reacts differently when you walk in front of it, because it’s your tiger, than when I walk in front of it, because it doesn’t know me. It uses voice, so that you can interact with it and play with it, it uses gestures and essentially moves you to this deep adventure on an island where you’re finding the secret of a pirate in much the same way as a traditional adventure type game.

“This is one of what I would say was one of the key innovations, that captured people’s minds with Milo – this idea that we could create an emotion engine, an engine that would fuse these human input behaviours and create a relationship with this imaginary character. What I think you see in Kinectimals is precisely that.”

Cliffy B has shared his thoughts on the potential of the Milo project via his Twitter.

“After seeing Milo in person and hearing the pitch (AND if it is allowed to fully shine) it could be like Heavy Rain and Pixar had a baby,” he said on his Twitter.

He also talked about the rumor that the game was canned, saying that he doesn’t know anything about the status of Milo yet.

“And no, I do not know the status of the Milo. We did not discuss that,” he said.

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So says head of the Xbox department at Microsoft, Aaron Greenberg. “Last year we unveiled the Project Natal technology, we showed a bunch of technology demos as part of that,” Greenberg told TV show Good Game. “And obviously [Milo] is a technology demo that continues to exist, but right now it’s not a game that we’re planning to bring to market.”

That kind of pisses me off because as recently as last month, Lionhead kingpin Peter Molyneux was maintaining that it was a full blown retail game still under development.

What adds to the confusion is the fact that apparently, Molyneux is all set to demonstrate a newer version of the ‘game’ at a TEDGlobal seminar next month, which he has claimed will be ten times better than the E3 2009 tech demo was.

Well, that sucks. Not that I care two hoots about Kinect and anything to do with it anymore anyway.

Molyneux said that he expects launch Kinect titles to be good, but not to showcase what Kinect can really do, so he promises that future titles are the ones that will truly show its potential.

“…the experiences that you see at launch, they’re good, they’re robust and they work. But I would encourage you and the whole world not to think of those experiences to define what Kinect is. It just gives you a glimpse of [what] the future can bring.” he said.

“So, I think that those launch titles are great, but the second wave of titles is where the real greatness comes.” he added.

Expect to see full information about Milo here at GamingBolt

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The Creative Director behind Microsoft Games Studios Europe further teased by adding, “It made people look around and say ‘How could you make a game out of a character like Milo?’ And I think that question is still out there; I’m just not allowed to answer it.”

Milo and Kate have very much been forgotten since their first showing at E3 almost 9 months ago.

E3 cannot come quick enough this year.