Amazon prototyping Lord of the Rings online game concepts, says exec

Will Amazon ship a much-promised Lord of the Rings online game sooner or later? Amazon Video games GM Jeff Gattis says the corporate stays on the hunt for the right idea to ship to followers.

In a relentless state of evolution, Amazon’s gaming enterprise has been some of the turbulent, but persistent operations within the trade. Twitch, a slate of MMOs, cloud gaming — the corporate has experimented in each path. In a latest dialog with Polygon, Gattis admitted there was nonetheless loads of work to be accomplished to focus the studio and produce cohesion and readability to its multipronged method to gaming, which incorporates Amazon Sport Studios correct to the Luna platform and even the Youngsters Plus mannequin that funnels cellular video games to Fireplace gadgets. However the GM’s hope is that a number of nice video games could possibly be the gateway to lastly creating an id for Amazon as a gaming firm.

“I’d argue there’s not been numerous innovation within the recreation area within the final decade or so,” he tells Polygon. “I imply, satirically, PUBG may need been it. However I feel there are alternatives to create new kinds of video games and that is numerous what we have been attempting to concentrate on is new recreation mechanics.”

That is the place Lord of the Rings matches in, but in addition doesn’t. Gattis says Amazon’s slice of Tolkien’s Center-earth rights is “nonetheless a part of our portfolio investigation” with out something particular within the works. That doesn’t imply work isn’t occurring.

Gattis’ feedback come within the wake of stories that Amazon’s ambitions for a Lord of the Rings MMO quietly unraveled within the wake of the corporate’s 2025 layoffs. First introduced in 2023 by way of a cope with Embracer-owned Center-earth Enterprises, a Eurogamer report from Might prompt the challenge spent years in an unusually early state of growth earlier than reportedly reaching pre-production shortly earlier than Amazon’s October restructuring.

Whereas Amazon has by no means formally introduced the sport’s cancellation, sources instructed Eurogamer that builders have been being shifted off New World and onto the Lord of the Rings group because the challenge lastly ramped up, just for the broader layoffs and Amazon’s retreat from large-scale MMO growth to intervene. That leaves Amazon’s Center-earth plans largely confined to Prime Video, the place a 3rd season of The Rings of Energy is about for later in 2026, and a fourth season is already in growth.

Whereas Amazon has a gentle pipeline set for publishing, together with the following Tomb Raider video games, there’s nonetheless an inside group toiling away at each MMOs like New World, which Amazon will sundown in January 2027, and unannounced tasks. (It additionally sounds just like the group will at the very least think about creating its personal James Bond recreation within the wake of 007 First Mild.) After I push Gattis to grasp if creatives are actively experimenting with LOTR ideas at Amazon proper now, he provides me a easy “that’s proper” whereas holding the corporate line. It’s positively early too announce something realistically.

“I checked out a prototype as one thing fairly fascinating simply a few weeks in the past,” he says. “We’re simply evaluating completely different ideas, however sadly, I haven’t got a tough, ‘That is what we’ll do’ I may give you immediately.”

At any time when Amazon will get to its personal Lord of the Rings recreation, it will have some wholesome competitors: In Might, Warhorse Studios, the group behind the acclaimed Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, introduced it was at work on an open-world recreation set in Center-earth.