The Lord of the Rings, The White Council

The game will be developed at Electronic Arts' Redwood City, California studio. The executive producer for the role-playing game will be Electronic Arts developer Steve Gray.

The Lord of the Rings movies, which are the copyright of U.S.-based New Line Cinema, were a smash hit, grossing US$3 billion at the box office worldwide.

Frustratingly, Electronic Arts is giving away very few details about its new game. "We are not disclosing a lot of information about the game at this stage, as it has not been developed yet," Gamel says. "The game is intended for the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC. It will not be available for Nintendo's Wii games console format."

Gamel says that in the Electronic Arts game, a human player will be able to take on the character of an elf, a hobbit, a man or a dwarf. "The goal will be for the player to become a hero through the way he or she interacts with the other on-screen characters," he says.

Krishna says the new game will take full advantage of new video games technology.

"The new generation of games consoles are so much more interactive and let players do a lot more than older-generation consoles," Krishna says "For example, you can wave the new consoles around in the air, if you want to mimic a sword fight, and the charactiers on the screen will also wave their arms in the air as if fighting."

"The role-playing game genre involves sword-play, and our game will incorporate sword fights," Gamel says. "But there is a lot more to role-playing games than just fighting. players will get heavily involved in a role playing game."

Krishna says that players will get heavily involved in a role-playing game such as Electronic Arts' Lord of the Rings title.