Turbine becomes exclusive licensee for Tolkien-based online worlds

Huge news from Turbine today as they've finalized the aquisition of rights to publish and develop "online worlds" based on the Tolkien Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit properties. Wow. Here's a clip from the press release:

As part of the agreement, Turbine will own all of the game assets to the upcoming, highly anticipated massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) The Lord of the Rings": Middle-Earth" Online. All publishing responsibilities previously assumed by VU Games for the online license have been transitioned to Turbine effective immediately.

I'll look more into this, but my initial reaction focuses more on how far this once-small company has come over the years. It "feels" like a little independent shop that's come a long way to be a still-independent BIG studio... more like a conglomerate of sorts, I guess. I hope this is Good News as a whole. Time will tell, considering we really don't know how Turbine's recent work is coming along. I will revisit Turbine's capacity to turn out good games when I see where their ownership of Asheron's Call takes that franchise with the upcoming expansions to AC1 & 2. However, it's hard not to say "good job" to those folks!