7. Halo Was Originally A Real-Time Strategy Game
Ensemble StudiosBelieve it or not, in its early stages of development, Halo was planned to be released as a Real-Time Strategy game for the Mac and PC. Granted, the series eventually went that route in 2009 anyway with the acclaimed RTS Halo Wars, though we for one can't imagine that the series would necessarily have taken off if it started out as an RTS: the genre's a notoriously difficult nut to crack, and the series would never have garnered the popularity that it managed as an FPS. It's easy to imagine that the original game would probably have ended up a lot like Halo Wars, so in a sense, Microsoft got to have their cake and eat it, setting Bungie up with the big-hitters and then farming out the RTS to Ensemble Studios.