Just my thoughts on the matter...

First, I am very interested in that kind of interactivity innovations. Head tracking, face recognition, motion tracking - great to see anybody trying new things. And I do believe that the Natal technology may work as well as advertised. As others have noted, time will tell which genres work well with buttonless control schemes and which don't.
 

But the Milo demo movie really upset me a bit. MS & Molyneux are making this software look like something it can't possibly be, to the point of faking, imo. All over the internet, you see gushing comments like "ZOMG11!! how do the do it?!? this is making my head explode! what will Milo do when I ask him to kiss my butt? LolOLOLZ". Well, Milo would probably tell you he hasn't done his homework. Or that he likes your blue shirt. Same result when you ask him "what's a bread?", "stop that british accent" or "play the drums".

Milo's voice in the vid was clearly prerecorded, not synthesized. So he's got a limited repertoire of phrases, just like every other software of that kind before. And unless voice regognition technology made a HUGE jump forward recently, I don't believe for a second that Milo could properly understand sentences he's never heard before. And let's not get started on the AI necessery for a semantic interpretation of a new sentence...

Normally there would be nothing wrong with a software like this. And the rest - face recognition, interactivity - may very well work. But I feel like MS is warming up the old promises of the "Virtual Reality / Artificial Inteligence / Cyberspace" age, buzzwords other designers stopped using for a good reason: Because technology is too far from actually delivering any of that.
 

I hope you know what I'm trying to say... it's an intriguing idea, and I don't mean to diss it. But that video... "Milo, I'm a bit nervous..." "Nervous? You?" They making it look like Milo understands random sentences (in british slang). That's a bit shady. 

What do you think?

I do think it was a bit dishonest when they were promising, pretty much, an actual sentient, self aware AI.

I mean, if they did that, then this goes WAY beyond some petty console war.

Nop. Simpsons did it (in this case... eyetoy).

Milo is a sick joke from a sick mind (Molineaux). Of course he is also the guy that hype the games he does much ahead of what they really are, so...

Break out the Turing test! Yes, this is definitely over-promising.

I already made a thread about this that was ignored ;__;

And project Milo will be less that they promisse IMO, because it will only recognize english talking by the way it seems, and won't recognize everything you say. The bullshit video shown at E3 is just as true as the Killzone 2 video for PS3 on E3 2005.

Haha, just had a great chat with Jabberwacky.

Turns out the programmers actually programmed it to follow Asmiov's 3 laws. Damn

Anyway, Milo really interested me. I wonder how it'll turn out

The kotaku guy that got a demo of it said that there was a guy controlling it from a terminal, but that he didn't know how much input that guy was actually making to the onscreen result.

You mean Asimov right? Here the laws:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

From the Kotaku article:

Molyneux had me wrap up the demo by approaching Milo again. He asked me to call Milo over by saying my own name and acting happy. Milo walked up to me and complimented me on my blue shirt (my shirt was indeed blue). Then he stood there, waiting for me to say things. There was a little awkwardness here. The Milo demo was partially being manipulated by a developer who was sitting nearby, and I couldn't tell if he was merely calibrating the game or how much he was pulling its strings. I said nice things to Milo and the virtual boy smiled. I said I was standing next to Peter Molyneux and he sort of sighed. The most charming moment was that blue-shirt moment. It felt like this virtual person made a connection with me.

So it recognized a color and smiled when he said nice things... with the help of a developer.

I think anyone with any sense knows that was very early (and promising) stuff. Clearly, reading various interviews, etc. it was a loose set of capabilities following a tight script rather than anything remotely robust - i.e. the wrong thing said or gesture would have blown the demo out of the water right away.

I love adventure titles and would really like this approach for something like that - but in the end the same old problem from the first Dungeon adventures persists: how flexible can you make it before you get the response 'I don't understand that?'...

Apart from casual fun titles, I would expect any serious title on this to be years away.

I'm also not sold on this as the primary input. Take driving, sure I can sit and turn my hands in mid air, move my feet, etc. but in the end I'd be better with an actual physical wheel, pedals, etc. no matter how good this gets.

In the end I want the best input mechanism for the job in hand, be it this, a wheel, a mouse, etc. not games shoehorned to weaker approaches.