MMOs on Consoles: Epic Fail
DateTime:9/27/2009 11:20:23 AM

When Microsoft announced in 2006 that it had teamed up with Marvel to create a massively-multiplayer online game for the Xbox 360 based on the publisher's comic book universe, it seemed like a match made in nerd heaven. True Fantasy Live, an MMO project to be developed by Level-5 and published directly by Microsoft, was announced in 2002 as one of the Xbox 360's killer apps for the Japanese market. It was quietly canceled two years later. Microsoft's own Ensemble Studios, creator of the Age of Empires real-time strategy series and developer of the upcoming RTS Halo Wars, was tasked with creating an MMO set in the world of Halo, Microsoft's most important and lucrative gaming brand.

For years now, Microsoft and Sony have been talking about the potential of console MMOs, and many projects have been loudly trumpeted only to fade away with a deflated whimper.  But before builders could finish work on a new Ensemble campus to house the team that would develop the title, the project was abandoned, construction of the campus halted and Ensemble was closed outright.But two years later, the deal was in shambles, and Microsoft Game Studios Corporate Vice President Shane Kim announced that the Marvel MMO was dead, the latest (but not the last) casualty in console makers' long-running battle to bring persistent online gaming to its woefully underserved audiences.