Furthermore, the person who headed Xbox at the time of the Xbox One’s release was also responsible for the demise of Ensemble Studios.

DOOM level designer Sandy Petersen explained on Twitter why Ensemble Studios closed. Petersen worked at Ensemble in the 2000s. Xbox head Don Mattrick shut down Ensemble and the in-development Halo MMO to protect his short-term, profit-based bonus. Petersen created the environment and story of the ancient Halo galaxy, and said the project was already in an advanced stage of development when it was canceled—something earlier reports on the game’s development also confirm.

“In 2008, Ensemble Studios started planning a gigantic MMO set in the Halo universe. We code-named it Titan. It was to take place tens of thousands of years ago, before the Halos were set off and destroyed all sentient life in the galaxy. All of that was undone when Don Mattrick realized that his stock bonus was based on Microsoft’s income from games over three years. You see, we estimated three and a half years to finish Titan if we did it right. But that was beyond Mattrick’s deadline. By firing all of Ensemble, he wouldn’t have to pay for our expensive studio for three years, and he didn’t care about Titan. All he lost was a game studio that sold at least three million copies of every game it made. I don’t believe he did justice to Microsoft stockholders, but hey—Don started as an Electronic Arts hatchet man, so what would you expect?” said Petersen.

In 2008, Ensemble Studios started planning a gigantic MMO set in the Halo universe. We code-named it Titan. It was to take place tens of thousands of years ago, before the Halos were set off & destroyed all sentient life in the Galaxy.

I was in charge of the universe-building -… pic.twitter.com/8eaSbEt81X

— Sandy Petersen 🪔 (@SandyofCthulhu) October 28, 2025

Petersen said that Microsoft and the team estimated the game’s total revenue at $1.1 billion—an astonishing amount for any title. In 2021, Deadline reported that total sales of the Halo franchise had reached 81 million copies. At $60 per copy, the series’ game sales revenue over 20 years would be approximately $5 billion. According to Petersen, Titan’s “Alliance” and “Horde” would have been human-like Forerunners and the Covenant. Some leaked graphics and screenshots from Titan appear to have been created alongside the main series, while other designs are more science-fiction in nature and consistent with Petersen’s description.

Perhaps Titan would have featured time travel or aligned with a far-future aesthetic for its setting, similar to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In a 2008 interview, Dave Pottinger, Ensemble’s former technical director, said that the Covenant was not yet fully formed in Titan, which aligns with Petersen’s characterization of the story—a distant-past Covenant that was only nominally opposed to the more-or-less human-like Forerunners.

Fans do not remember Mattrick’s Xbox era fondly. Under his leadership, Microsoft pushed Kinect, overhauled the UI to imitate Miis, and ultimately launched the Xbox One with an initial pitch as an always-online media hub—kicking off a run of console generations in which Sony maintained its lead over a once-threatening rival.

Source: PCGamer, Deadline, Shacknews