Amazon Games has many projects in the pipeline, but the two biggest ones are the next Tomb Raider game and the Lord of the Rings MMO, both of which are produced in partnership with franchises owned by the Embracer Group.
Those are massive IPs that may well interest millions of fans. However, it’s been a while since we heard about any of those. The new Tomb Raider game was first unveiled to be in production (with Epic’s Unreal Engine 5) in April 2022, while the publishing deal with Amazon was announced in December of that year. As for the Lord of the Rings MMO (which Amazon was making before the deal fell through with Tencent and had to be renegotiated with the Embracer Group once the latter company acquired Middle-earth Enterprises), the game was only talked about briefly in May 2023.
When can players expect to see them? According to Amazon Games boss Christoph Hartmann, recently interviewed by Variety, it shouldn’t be that long, although neither project will be rushed.
It’s not going to be tomorrow, but it’s not too far away. As I said, we’re getting into a much more regular cadence of shipping games. That’s all I’m allowed to tell you right now… It’s all about quality. You don’t want to just be rushed out. That’s doesn’t work. It has to be Triple-A quality, because the bar is so high.
We’ve heard rumors that Tomb Raider specifically should be released in less than a year, featuring an open world that protagonist Lara Croft will traverse with her motorcycle. If that’s the case, a reveal at Gamescom or The Game Awards at the latest makes sense.
With Tomb Raider, Amazon is also preparing a new TV series for Prime Video. Earlier rumors mentioned that the universe would be connected between the games and the live action, but Christoph Hartmann seemed to dispel that notion in the Variety interview.
Obviously, we want to work much closer together, and we’ll be working much closer together with the different entertainment areas Amazon has and a very natural one is Prime Video. You see it with “Tomb Raider,” where we’re gonna have a “Tomb Raider” game coming and they’re doing a show. And some people say, “Oh, will they be linked together?” And I give them the example, look at “Spider-Man.” There’s amazing, amazing games. There’s great animated content, there’s great live-action, and everyone seems to be very happy with that. So it does not need to be always that everything is mingled together, but it’s really one brand, which really just shows for me why transmedia nowadays is so important, and how games is such a vital part.
As for the Lord of the Rings MMO, it may well be too late for that project to be intertwined with the TV series (which is getting its second season soon). As a reminder, we don’t know much about this game other than it’ll be based on an enhanced version of the New World engine, albeit with different priorities due to the specific intellectual property.
Overall, Hartmann said Amazon now has eight games in development, with the publisher aiming to get two or three out in a given year. This year’s titles are probably Throne and Liberty (out on September 17 on PC and consoles) and New World: Aeternum (slated for October 15 on PC and consoles). Amazon also announced deals to publish Bandai Namco Online’s Blue Protocol (although the studio is in a dire financial situation and the game hasn’t been mentioned by Amazon press releases in a long while), the next games by Glowmade, Disruptive Games, and Maverick Games, and two projects in development at the internal Montréal and Bucharest studios.
