In an interview on MTV's MMO blog Shane Kim, head of Microsoft Game Studios, confirmed that the Marvel Massively-Multiplayer Online game is officially dead.  Back in September of 2006 the Marvel MMORPG was announced with great fanfare (see 'Marvel & Cryptic Unveil Marvel Universe Online') and Frank Pape, Senior Director of Business Development for Microsoft Game Studios, told ICv2 that the Marvel MMO would be out before the end of the decade.

That was then, this is the new reality -- as Microsoft's Kim explained to MTV, the Marvel MMO was conceived as a subscription-based game, and there is currently only one subscription-based MMO (The World of Warcraft) that has had the kind of performance that would 'meet our level or definition of commercial success.'  Apparently the Marvel project was too invested in the subscription-based format for the developers to attempt to transform the project into an ad-supported or an item/transaction-based game -- and of course the ad-supported and transaction-based formats have so far not yielded the kind of revenue that WoW generates.  According to Microsoft's Kim the decision to end development of the Marvel MMO was decided amicably among all the parties concerned.