While it may seem like a lot of these games are hitting the shelves, not all of them are good because of the quality.

Monolith has already released decent games with Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, Traveller’s Tales was successful with the LEGO adaptation of the IP, and Lords of the Ring Online has a long history of success. However, The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria was not excellent, and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was a uselessly lousy game (and Daedalic Entertainment pulled out of game development as a result). And after Shadow of War in 2017, there hasn’t been much activity around the IP (a few mobile games, a card game, and MMO add-ons). Now, Amazon has an MMO in the pipeline, but beyond that, there are still big questions about the future of the IP in video games.

For this reason, 2024 should bring big changes for the Tolkien legacy. Private Division (a publishing arm of Take-Two) is set to release a Shire-centric game this year. Then there’s Amazon’s MMO, but who knows when they’ll be ready with it. We don’t know much about either project, but after The Lord of the Rings: Gollum and Moria, the fans will be hard to convince (but in the meantime, this will be important). And the longer-term future of the franchise is up to them: if these two projects don’t convince the audience, they’ll just abandon the whole thing.

The other aspect revolves around the Embracer Group. The Lars Wingefors-led conglomerate began tightening its belt last year after a planned $2 billion deal with Saudi Savvy Games fell through, resulting in the closure of several studios (including Saints Row’s Volition). The fast-expanding publishing group has already admitted that it will put a lot of emphasis on the Lord of the Rings IP, so they too are carrying a heavy burden.

The future of the IP is not easy.

Source: GameRant