EA's Spielberg collaboration binned

Steven Spielberg's second collaboration with EA, codenamed Project LMNO, has been canned, the publisher has confirmed.

A spokesperson for EA told Joystiq, "While EA maintains its relationship with Steven Spielberg, we ceased development of LMNO."

Former EA employee Jake Kazdal elaborated further in the latest 8-4 Play podcast. "I don't wanna get the EA police on me. I can't say too much. It was very ambitious. We had a small team - very smart people on it. And we spent a lot of time thinking and talking. And doing some stuff. And it just sort of... I don't know exactly what was the thing that made it fall apart."

"I'm sure anybody you ask is gonna tell you something a little bit different, but it didn't end up ever taking off. There was some rival game stuff that may or may not have come out of EA that was basically the same thing minus some of the stuff we were doing. There was just a lot of politics."

Project LMNO was thought to be an action adventure game.

Of the three titles Spielberg agreed to help EA make back in 2005, only one of them has made it into stores. Spielberg's first project with EA, Boom Blox, was released on Wii in 2007 to critical acclaim and modest commercial success.

Spielberg hasn't turned his back on the world of videogames though. Rumour has it he's keen to make that on-again off-again Halo movie.