You may or may not have known that at one time there was in fact a Halo MMOG in the works by the now disbanded Ensemble Studio, makers of such RTS titles as Halo Wars and Age of the Empires. IncGamers recently caught up to former Ensemble staffer and current Windstorm Studios founder and President Dusty Monk to talk about the Halo-based MMOG that never came to fruition. Monk explains that the Halo MMOG was set to compete with Blizzard as the team had the right talent, the right people, and the successful Halo IP. So what happened?

If you've followed Microsoft's few attempts to move into the MMOG genre with a major title, you probably know that they don't have a great track record with making it to the finish line. When there was a changing of the guard at Microsoft, something Vanguard: Saga of Heroes also ran into, Microsoft decided to focus more of their resources on targetng the casual market. As such, the $90 million dollar budgeted Halo MMOG that was at the time called Project Titan was cut.

"You have to remember that Ensemble came from a standpoint of being really good at competing against Blizzard Entertainment," he noted, drawing comparisons between the success of the Warcraft series and the success of the Age of Empires series. "We had a pretty good history of knowing the types of stuff that Blizzard put into their games to make them really successful, and the kinds of things we'd need to put into an MMO to compete against Blizzard."

You can read part of the interview here. The full interview will be available later this week.