So, I just heard about this crazy thing – apparently, a Halo MMO was in development about 20 years ago! I always knew Halo was mostly a shooter, but they actually tried branching out a bit over the years. This MMO was being made by Ensemble Studios, the team behind Age of Empires, but it got canceled, and the reason is… well, it’s a really lame one that I think a lot of Halo fans are going to be super bummed about. It’s frustrating to hear a cool project like that just didn’t make the cut for such a silly reason.
Game designer Sandy Petersen, formerly of Ensemble Studios, recently shared details about a cancelled Halo MMO project on social media. The game, internally known as “Titan,” would have been set thousands of years before the original Halo series. Players would have been able to choose to play as either the Forerunners or the Covenant, and the Flood were planned to be featured as enemies. Petersen revealed that the project was projected to earn at least $1.1 billion.
So, apparently, the Halo MMO got killed off back in 2009 when Ensemble Studios shut down, and according to Petersen, it all came down to one guy: Don Mattrick. He was running Xbox at the time, and the story is that he just didn’t want to wait for the MMO to be finished because of how it would affect his bonus. See, his bonus was tied to how much money games made over three years, and the MMO was going to take longer than that to actually make any money. So, instead of letting it finish, he just canceled the whole thing. Pretty frustrating as a fan, honestly.
Petersen explained that finishing Titan properly would have taken around 3.5 years, which was too long for Mattrick. By closing down the entire Ensemble studio, Mattrick avoided paying for its operating costs for three years and essentially abandoned the Titan project. Petersen felt Mattrick only lost a studio that consistently sold at least 3 million copies of each game it released.
It’s important to remember that Petersen’s account of what happened might be biased, since it’s based on information from just one person. However, many people see Mattrick’s time at Microsoft as a crucial period for Xbox. He was a key figure in the development of the unsuccessful Xbox Kinect, and is largely blamed for the many issues surrounding the Xbox One’s launch and unveiling. Given this, it’s quite believable that he also played a role in the cancellation of the Halo MMO.
While fans might hope for a new large-scale online game set in the Halo universe eventually, Microsoft’s immediate focus is on revitalizing the core Halo series. They’re doing this by completely rebuilding the original Halo: Combat Evolved. Currently planned for release in 2026, the remake will be available on Xbox Series X/S, PC, and, unexpectedly, PlayStation 5.
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2025-11-03 23:40