Tomb Raider and Lord of the Rings MMO Will Be Shown in the Not Too Distant Future, Says Amazon Games Boss

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.

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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