NEWS - Wednesday, July 27, 2005
EA Gets Rings Rights
EA Gets Complete Rings Rights Console fans may have missed it during the recent announcements of Battle for Middle-earth II and Lord of the Rings Tactics, but Electronic Arts has confirmed that it has finally been granted the official rights to develop future videogames based on the highly popular J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy series, The Lord of the Rings. Now if you’re confused it’s understandable, as EA has been already been publishing games inspired by the franchise since 2001 -- the hitch is, that up until now, Electronic Arts was only allowed to develop titles based on the New Line Cinema movie series and not the books themselves. This announcement means that future Lord of the Rings titles will look like the films but feature content that was previously only seen in the novels. "Now that we are expanding our Lord of the Rings universe to encompass Tolkien’s books, we’ll be able to combine the visual impact of the films with those complex stories," said Steve Gray, Executive Producer of The Lord of the Rings Tactics at EA. "The RPG genre, in particular, is a great medium for story telling. We are delving into unexplored depths of Tolkien’s works to deliver new, compelling, and immersive experiences." Though the aforementioned Tactics and Middle-earth 2 games have been confirmed under the new agreement, no console titles that take advantage of it have to be revealed. Should that change at any time, however, we’ll keep you posted.Source: http://www.ign.com
