Amazon says it still wants to make a game set in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy universe despite canceling a Lord of the Rings MMO it had in development.
Earlier this year it was reported that Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings MMO was dead, but with a sliver of hope that the company would still eventually release some sort of Lord of the Rings game in the future. Amazon issued a statement at the time saying: “Our creative team continues to explore a compelling new game experience that does justice to Tolkien’s world; we are working closely with Middle-earth and remain excited about the IP.”
IGN spoke to Jeff Gattis, GM of Amazon Gaming at Summer Game Fest last week to find out more. “Well, nothing’s been canceled per se,” Gattis insisted, before revealing Amazon is currently evalulating various concepts to help figure out what kind of Lord of the Rings game it wants to make.
“It’s not the most satisfying answer, but the true answer is we’re still looking at a number of different things,” Gattis said. “I looked at a project a couple of weeks ago that I thought was quite compelling that perhaps we can go forward with. But evaluating different concepts is trying to figure out what game we want to make, what’s the right one for our audience, what’s the right one for the broader audience. And my hope is that we’ll get there.”
The usphot is Gattis confirmed to me that Amazon definitely stills plan to make a Lord of the Rings game, and that it would be completely separate to the recently announced Middle-earth open world RPG in development at Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer Warhorse.
Amazon is seemingly committed to making video games based on IP, both that it owns, such as Tomb Raider, James Bond, and The Lord of the Rings, as well as others outside of its portfolio, like the recently released Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite. But don’t count on any brand new franchises being created solely for Amazon video games.
“We have not been, to be candid with you, really focused on creating new IP per se, around characters and the like,” Gattis said. “There are a lot of things that we’re investing in, which I call more innovative game mechanics and things like that. And there might be IP that comes out of that. Like I said, we’ve got a ton in development right now. We almost just wish this stuff could come faster so that I could have proof points to tell you instead of just saying, ‘Trust me, we’ve got stuff coming.’ But all in due time.”
Amazon’s recent history in AAA game development has been rocky to say the least. Last year’s announcement that MMO New World would go into maintenance mode came as part of a round of layoffs affecting an eye-watering 14,000 roles. Bloomberg had reported that Amazon was cutting back especially on MMOs, and that the layoffs included “significant” cuts to Amazon’s video game operation across its Irvine and San Diego offices. Earlier this year, former Amazon Game Studios boss Christoph Hartman left the company in what was reported as a continued retreat from the PC and console video-game space in favor of Amazon’s cloud gaming service Luna.
Nonetheless, Gattis insisted that Amazon Game Studios remains active in the AAA market.
“Yeah, very much committed to it,” he stated. “But committed to the right AAA for the platform. I think that’s part of the assessment we’ve done over the past year is just trying to understand what content makes sense. Tomb Raider makes a ton of sense, we think. There are other things in the pipeline. Broad appeal IP fits in with Prime Video. What we don’t want to necessarily do is AAA things that don’t really have any real reason to exist in Amazon.”
Gattis admitted it hasn’t been easy for Amazon to break into the AAA space, but hopes a new approach to what players can expect to play from Amazon Game Studios will help find its place in the market.
“I always start with very Amazon things,” Gattis said. “Start with your customer, understand your audience. And I think that’s been part of it for Amazon. I don’t think there’s been a real clear understanding of what role Amazon plays in the game space and who we’re going after. I think there can be a tendency with a lot of big companies to say, ‘Oh, we see a big market. We want to be in it.’ And that’s not really the Amazon way. Let’s zoom out and figure out, where is there an opportunity that’s underserved in the market and how can Amazon actually bring some unique value here? And if we can’t, let’s stay out of it. And I think it’s been that assessment to give me confidence that we’ve got it right now, but it’s hard.”
“The AAA space in particular, very difficult to break into,” he continued. “These companies have spent literally decades and billions and tens of billions of dollars to build up install bases and IP and network effects and friends and all the stores. So I think it’s going to be very hard for a brand new high end platform to emerge.”
The first big test for this new approach from Amazon, will be its revival of Tomb Raider, with Legacy of Atlantis — a reimagining of Lara Croft’s original adventure coming in February 2027 — followed by a entirely new game, Tomb Raider: Catalyst and the Sophie Turner-led Prime Video TV show.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
