Ensemble studios are closing, as a result of Microsoft’s deciding that the studio wasn't very profitable. We even read yesterday the opinion of a regular employee on the matter and it was quite hard to digest, to say the least, but until the Halo Wars title is shipped, Ensemble will be kept alive.

Now, recent rumors are surfacing and it seems that, at some point, the company was working on the Halo MMO project and it had even devised a prototype interface, but the project was scrapped. The screenshots from that prototype, which have been collected by GamaSutra, show an interface quite similar to that of World of Warcraft and a character customization screen also resembling Blizzard's hugely successful MMO. But don't think they just copied WoW and put a character from Halo there, because the prototype game shows all the common characteristics of an MMO developed for the PC. 

This rumor could actually be the confirmation of several statements released around 2006 and 2007  regarding the collaboration of Bungie, the developer behind the Halo shooter, and Ensemble, which at the time launched the successful Age of Empires III strategy title. Everybody thought that the result of their labor would be a Halo based MMO, and now, after Bruce Shelley from Ensemble reported in a July 2008 blog post about some big project being cancelled, speculations are made that the project in question was actually the Halo MMO prototype game.

Although the concept was reported to have been scrapped, that definitely won't stop Microsoft from resurrecting the franchise. In this context, a couple of representatives even stated that there were quite a few titles under development based on the Halo universe, although from these, the future strategy game Halo Wars is the only one that has been officially confirmed by Microsoft. The idea that a Halo MMO might still be developed is also backed up by the fact that several Ensemble employees will continue to work for Microsoft. So, Halo fans, keep your fingers crossed because you can still get your MMO game.