Announced as part of the cover of the next GameInformer comes this gem:

"If that’s not enough, we have the first look at Cryptic Studios’ latest superhero MMO, Champions Online. The City of Heroes developers are taking on PCs and consoles, too, letting us all unleash our inner heroes—or villains."

So, Marvel / Microsoft dump the Marvel Universe Online title and would seem to leave Cryptic out in the cold. What does Cryptic do? It works its pen-and-paper RPG contacts and grabs the rights to one of the better known superhero RPG rulesets. While I'm sure not every bit of work Cryptic did on MUO could be salvaged for MUO (and contractually they might be blocked on some things) all the people they've trained up in working on a superhero MMO for PCs and consoles get to go back to working on a superhero MMO.

The fact that Champions Online will come out on a console and that MUO was meant to be released on the Xbox 360 probably will see Champions Online out on the Xbox 360... possibly before MUO arrives (if it ever does).

How thick the irony.

I hearby shorten Champions Online to ChampO (CO is too close to CoH/V) and look forward to finding out how flexible it will be in character design.