February 2, 2009 - Back in September, images surfaced of a prototype massively multiplayer online game set in the Halo universe. The game was reported to be under development as recently as 2007 at Ensemble Studios, which closed down for good last week after finishing up its work on the upcoming real-time strategy game Halo Wars.

The gaming business Web site Gamasutra was there when the studio shut its doors last week and reports that the Halo MMO idea was alive and very well at Ensemble for a time.

The game started as a concept called Titan in 1998, after Ultima Online started getting attention in the PC gaming development community. After Microsoft began its relationship with Bungie, the Titan idea was merged with the Halo license and was code-named Orion.

Microsoft was so serious about the concept that, according to Gamasutra, it commissioned the construction of a new Ensemble campus for the game's development. But for unnamed reasons, Microsoft halted the construction and the project, and Ensemble was later marked for closure altogether.

The Halo franchise has turned out to be something of a poisoned chalice for Ensemble, which gained fame as an independent developer of the Age of Empires RTS series in the late 1990s. Microsoft bought the company in 2001, and for the past few years the studio has been working on Halo Wars, its first ground-up console game. The Halo MMO would have been Ensemble's first foray into the MMO market as well.

Microsoft has made no official statements about the Halo MMO project, but company executives have been frank in the past about their MMO ambivalence. The Halo online project is one of a handful of high-profile console MMO projects that have been shelved at the company in recent years.