Cryptic Studios, developers of City of Heroes and City of Villains, will develop Marvel Universe Online with Marvel Entertainment and Microsoft Game Studios.

This news is really unexpected as in late 2004 Marvel Entrateinment sued Cryptic for intellectual property infringement. At the time, Marvel was very worried of City of Heroes and its excessively customizable characters since players were able to make characters looking very similar to the ones published by Marvel.

In December 2005 (less than a year ago), all claims were settled. More information and original documents of the case can be found inside EFF web site.

And now seems that both companies are happy to get together and develop/publish a new MMORPG. Reading official news found within Cryptic website, we can see that the game will be developed with Windows Vista and Xbox360 in mind. Also, seems that Microsoft will try again to get into the MMORPG genre after leaving other projects like Asheron's Call (still running, developers bought back IP), Asheron's Call 2 (closed) and the contested never published Mythica (article of Mythic sue over Microsoft here).

Obviously current CoH and CoV players are worried about the faith of their favorite game in terms of continuity and future development. Cryptic has stated that nothing will change and that there's room for more than one game even if both of a very similar genre.

Here you can find official press release along with a letter from Cryptic to CoH and CoV players.