Though Microsoft already took some risks with the Halo franchise with its upcoming RTS Halo Wars, apparently they had planned on taking an even bigger one with a massively multiplayer online game based on the the universe of the first person shooter.

Many fans have been asking for a Halo MMO for a long time, but those fans that have been begging for so long to get their hands on such a title, had their dreams shattered this week when Director of Technology for Ensemble Studios, David Pottinger, gave an interview to Shacknews.

Ensemble studios, the creators of Halo Wars, will close after the completion of the game and because of that, the Halo MMO will never see the light of day. The game had been green-lighted by Microsoft and many of the story details and some of the game play had been worked out, but due to recent economic struggles, Microsoft decided to cut the studio.

Pottinger did say that the game had close to a 40-man team working on it, but the project was cut when the Microsoft let the studio go.

Many of the people that worked on the Halo MMO were repositioned to help with the completion of Halo Wars, “It actually turned out--we ended up reusing a lot of the people,” said Pottinger. “We had hired people, who were excited about making a Halo game, and we used them on Phoenix--Phoenix is the Halo Wars codename. And a lot of that stuff that we picked up was able to be reused. So we didn’t lose everything. It wasn’t all wasted.”

Though we may never see the MMO Ensemble was working on, we sure hope Microsoft decides to give the MMO another chance with a different developer. Why would a company cut a game with the word Halo in it? Everyone knows if it says “Halo” it sells.