10. Peter Molyneux Lies About The Kinect's Capabilities (Microsoft)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPIbGnBQcJY Who could forget the sheer abject awkwardness that wormed its way into Microsoft's conference hall when this thing was demoed? The Kinect (then known as Project Natal) was always a bit of a misfire for Xbox, as it didn't deliver on any of its promises and found itself relegated to the annals of poor party games only picked up on awful New Year's parties, but Milo was just something else altogether. The brainchild of professional industry hype-artist Peter Molyneux, 'Milo' was demoed as an adaptive communicative AI that could read emotion. Yeah, bit creepy isn't it? Just watch the above video though, Molyneux's descriptions of the events we're 'seeing happen' are literally just lies, especially in retrospect now we've seen what the hardware could do. Luckily, Microsoft caught onto the fact that not really anyone wants to have a conversation with a computer-generated adolescent - especially one that could supposedly pick up on vocal changes.
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Ewan Paterson
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
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