Amazon Games is working on a new Lord of the Rings MMO

Amazon Games has announced that a new Lord of the Rings (LOTR) MMO project is ongoing after a previous attempt was canned in 2021.

The details:

• Amazon Games has announced a new partnership with Embracer Group's Middle-earth Enterprises to create a new LOTR MMO. It is planned for both PCs and consoles, but a release date has yet to be specified. Amazon Games also confirmed that it would include stories from The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy.
• Amazon Games Orange County, the team behind the 2021 MMORPG New World, will lead development, and no material created for Amazon's 2021 attempt to create an MMO based in the LOTR universe will be used. According to Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann, the former project was not "very long [in] development". It consisted of a "fairly small team working on a certain part of the game.”
• "This is a completely new game because the license is much, much wider," Hartmann continued, adding, "Obviously, there's nothing changing because we all know the world is set and the characters are set. It's really the freedom we have in terms of gameplay features where now anything is possible, and the limitation is whether it's technically possible or not."
• It's also worth noting that the game has no ties to the existing Lord of the Rings Online MMO, which was released in 2007 and is still receiving updates today. It's unlikely that the upcoming MMO will have any impact on the title, which will continue to exist as a completely separate product.

More upcoming games:

• According to a recent job posting, Evil West developer Flying Wild Hog is working on a "fast-paced" third-person action title built with Unreal Engine 5. So far, little is known, but some speculate that it could be a sequel to Evil West.
• CD Projekt has confirmed that Project Sirius is back in development after the company wrote off $10 million in expenses after assessing "the scope and commercial potential of the original concept of Project Sirius." It's unclear how the "reformulated framework" affects the game's vision, but it's still expected to be a multiplayer Witcher title.