Lord of the Rings Rights: Coming Home?

Variety’s Blog is reporting that the video game rights to The Lord of the Rings have returned to Warner Bros. - or at least that is how it looks. EA’s rights to the popular franchise expired at the end of last year, but EA managed to wrangle an extension in March of last year with license holder Tolkien Enterprises until the end of 2008 so that it could finish work on Pandemic’s The Lord of the Rings: Conquest.

With that game released in January of this year, the rights to LOTR were in question. EA held those rights for seven years, with the only games made outside the company being Turbine’s The Lord of the Rings Online MMO games (Warner Bros. holds an equity stake in Turbine).

So now that Warner Bros. has the rights back, it makes logical sense that its video game development and publishing unit, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, would take the reins and use the license to create some unique games. Variety uses some logic and some inside sources to come to this conclusion, and it is hard to argue that this isn’t where the license is going.

The question is, what will Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment do with these rights? With two “Hobbit” movies in the works at New Line - which are being produced for MGM for 2011 and 2012 - you can bet some game tie-ins are planned.

thanks, Variety.

January Video Game Sales Up 13 Percent

Sales of video game hardware and software grew 13 percent in January, according to fresh January numbers from NPD Group. Overall software and hardware sales were $1.33 billion in North America, up from $1.18 billion from the same period a year ago. Game hardware, led by sales of the Wii, were up 17 percent to $445.4 million, while software saw a year over year increase of 10 percent, raking in $676.6 million in January.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Rundown: Jan. 23, 2009

So long New York! Today’s Rundown was written mostly on a train headed for upstate New York. The lady next to me got train sick and proceeded to cup her mouth for most of the trip. Not exatly the best way to end what was overall a wonderful trip to the Crispy offices, but hey we roll with the punches. On to the news after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest Ships

Is this the very first big game of 2009? Maybe. Electronic Arts has shipped Pandemic’s The Lord of the Rings: Conquest for the Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Nintendo DS. The game will ship on various platforms January 16, 2009 in Europe. The game takes some of the elements from Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars Battlefront II titles, reworks them and throws them into the wonderful world of Middle-earth.

In this world at war, players can choose to control their favorite heroes and villains including Aragorn, Gandalf, the Witch-king, the Balrog and even the Dark Lord Sauron. The campaigns can be played online or split-screen and four-player split-screen or online for up to 16 players round out the game’s various modes.

I sincerely hope that this will be the game to put Pandemic back on track. Given last year’s train wreck that was Mercenaries 2, I need something to believe in again. A playable demo with a single player tutorial and online support is available on Xbox Live. What little I played was entertaining enough, but hard to gauge. Demos after all, are snapshots; a small sliver of what could be a great game.

EA’s Games Convention Line-Up

Like many other publishers, Electronic Arts is show its goods at the Leipzig Games Convention this week in Leipzig, Germany this week.

At its press conference scheduled tomorrow, EA plans to give presentations on FIFA 09, The Sims 3, SimAnimals, Boogie SuperStar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Littlest Pet Shop, Monopoly, Command & Conquer Red Alert 3, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, Dragon Age: Origins, Need For Speed Undercover, and a sneak peak at RAGE from EA Partner, id Software.

Read the rest of this entry »