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UK, March 13, 2009 - Warner Bros. is to obtain the video game rights to the Lord of the Rings property, ending EA's patchy reign over virtual Middle Earth, according to a recent Variety report.

The move ends a seven year tenure for EA, which began with a series of well received film tie-ins but ended with the distinctly underwhelming Lord of the Rings: Conquest. With the rights returning to Warner Bros., it's as yet unclear what the publisher will do with the license - although as Joystiq points out, Warner Bros. now has a much bigger presence in the games industry than it did back in 2001, and has a large stake in Lord of the Rings Online developer Turbine.

Via IGN

Lord of the Rings Returns to Warner

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Seems like EA was more than upset with it's newest Lord of the Rings game. Maybe Warner's game division will do better with future releases of the game. The way I see it though is that EA is to blame for releasing a sub-par game expecting it to sell by the name alone. Your views and opinions?

Aww, EA actually did some decent LOTR games

Well hasn't the popularity of the LotR franchise kind of...fallen?

I mean,the last movie came out in 2003. Did EA really expect a game to sell on the name alone?

Anyway,I feel Warner could do better with the license.

Yeah they did make a few good LotR which I enjoyed alot on my PS2. The hack n slash games were my favorite of the series :D

I really liked Battle for Middle Earth - a nice RTS with a decent leveling system - plus you could control elephants :D

I also thought the Third Age was fun, even if a little linear in both level design and character advancement

LOTR The Two Towers was a pretty fun beat-em-up

Hmmmmm your post made me seriously want to pick up a copy of Battle for Middle Earth cause I do enjoy a good RTS every once in a while. Which system is it on or is it PC only?

I highly recommend it. There's a version for the xbox I believe, and the sequel has a 360 version, but I can't vouch for how good the console version is having only ever played the PC version

I was hoping for PS2 cause it would've been a cheap pickup second hand and I sold my Xbox years ago. I could always get it off Ebay or Amazon though for my PC. Thanks for informing me and I'm currently checking out some videos online.

^ battle for middle earth was the cnc generals engine with various updates.. that EA had from shutting down westwood studios who were working on cnc tiberian incoursion at the time :(

This is how it looked in 2002-2003 before westwood was closed and EA pacific started took the engine and made.... generals.. >_>

^Interesting^