Lord of the Rings RPG "on hold"

The year began with unconfirmed rumors that The Lord of the Rings: The White Council had been canceled. The open-world role-playing game, which had been unveiled last summer, was slated for a holiday 2007 release on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. It was to be the latest game from Electronic Arts based on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's best-selling fantasy novels.

Today, during a postearnings call, EA CFO Warren Jenson confirmed that The White Council is not canceled--but that work on it has been indefinitely suspended. "The Lord of the Rings product is back in development in terms of being on hold," he cryptically told an analyst who asked whether or not the game had been canceled outright.

But while EA hasn't pulled the plug on The White Council, its prognosis is not good. Jenson said that the game will not be released during the publisher's next financial year, which ends on March 31, 2008. He also announced that EA is "looking at the creative positioning and feature set on the Lord of the Rings franchise," but did not elaborate.