halo-mmo posts

It's been known for several months that before its shutdown Ensemble Studios was working on a project that would have brought Microsoft's Halo game franchise to the MMO genre. Now a new IncGames article sheds some more light on that canceled project. Former Ensemble team member Dusty Monk claims he worked on the game, code-named Titan, from 2004 to 2007.

Monk, who is now the founder of the new development studio Windstorm Studios, said that the project was designed to compete directly with Blizzard's audience for World of Warcraft. So why was the project eventually shut down? Monk says Microsoft had some new people come in to be in charge of their game division and felt that they need to go in more of a casual game direction to compete against Nintendo's Wii console. He states, "So part of this changing of the guard at Microsoft came along with the changing of the attitude to this very expensive, very long and very protacted $90 million USD project we were working on . . ."

The game industry is still reeling from the news last month that Age of Empires creators Ensemble Studios will be shut down in a few months, thanks to a business decision by its owner Microsoft. While a number of Ensemble team members will reform and launch a new independent studio it's clear that team members still don't understand Microsoft's reasoning for Ensemble's shutdown.

Shacknews chatted with Ensemble's director of technology Dave Pottinger who openly states, "...it's Microsoft's right to decide where they wanna put their money. Personally we all disagree with the decision. " He added, "...it honestly doesn't make a lot of sense. But that's their prerogative." Pottinger says that while Microsoft supposedly has a plan to remain profitable with their game business even the huge success of their Age of Empires/Age of Mythology RTS game wasn't enough for Microsoft to keep Ensemble going. Pottinger still seems mystified at the decision, saying, "Yeah, I think we made, what, 700 million dollars total on the Age franchise"

Pottinger seems to know some plans Microsoft has for the future of the Age of Empires series but states, " ...I'm not really at liberty to discuss it. But it will carry on. It's a great franchise." He also talked about the recent revelation that Ensemble was working on a now cancelled MMO based on Bungie's Halo shooter series. Pottinger states that at one point Ensemble had about 40 people on the project but, "...the new bosses thought it wasn't the best idea anymore. It had actually been green-lit, and then it got cancelled after that."

On Monday Ensemble Studios founder Bruce Shelley expressed his thoughts on the upcoming closure of the studio by Microsoft. Today, Gamasutra has posted up a story on a project that they claim was under development at the studio in the past; an MMO based on Microsoft's Halo shooter franchise.

Much of the info comes from concept artwork and screenshots (like the one seen above) that Gamasutra says came from a "Ensemble-linked online artist portfolio" web site. In addition, rumors that Ensemble might be working on such a project popped up on web sites two years ago. However the story speculates that the Halo MMO was internally cancelled by Microsoft before its existance could be officially announced sometime in 2007. If true this is only the latest development in Microsoft's failure to come up with their own MMO project as announced games like Mythica ,Citizen Zero, and Marvel Universe Online were later cancelled and their Asheron's Call MMO games were later bought back by their developer Turbine.