Lord of the Rings MMO video game coming from Amazon Games

Amazon Games has announced it’s making a new massively multiplayer online game based on The Lord of the Rings. Development will be led by New World studio Amazon Games Orange County. It is a brand-new project, and not the Lord of the Rings MMO Amazon canceled in 2021.

The game will be “an open-world MMO adventure in a persistent world set in Middle-earth, featuring the beloved stories of The HobbitYou can also find out more about the following: The Lord of the Rings literary trilogy,” according to Amazon’s news release. It’s early in development and likely several years away, but will be coming to PC and consoles. That’s it, in terms of details.

Amazon and a major retailer have struck a lucrative deal The Lord of the Rings Middle-earth Enterprises was recently acquired by Embracer Group (a Swedish conglomerate) to release the game. Amazon also has its own TV rights. Tolkien’s work, but these rights don’t cover the core Lord of the Rings texts — hence its Prime Video show The Rings of PowerIt is possible that the events took place much earlier.

This isn’t the only example of Amazon collaborating with Embracer as a kind of back door into taking ownership of a multimedia entertainment franchise. Amazon is reportedly planning to release a Tomb Raider TV series and film, along with collaborating on a Tomb Raider game. Embracer, which acquired Crystal Dynamics as well as Tomb Raider’s rights from Square Enix in the past year, sees Amazon clearly to be the partner it needs to make Lara Croft a multimedia global franchise.

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO won’t be the first game of its kind. The Lord of the Rings OnlineLaunched in 2007, the following year was World of Warcraft’s massive success; it was pretty good, and is still in operation, though it never reached as big an audience as its inspiration.

Amazon’s track record is impressive in the MMO sector, after successfully launching its own New World and the Western version of Smilegate’s Korean hit Lost Ark, so it’s quite well placed to make a success of a Lord of the Rings MMO — although it’s notoriously tricky to make licensed properties work in the genre.

It’s certainly not the only iron that Embracer has in the games-based-on-Tolkien fire. Embracer announced in February that it would launch five Lord of the Rings-based games within two years. Gollum and EA’s mobile game Heroes of Middle-Earth.