The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is a 2002 action-adventure video game developed by WXP for the Xbox. It was ported to the Game Boy Advance by Pocket Studios and the PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows by Surreal Software. The game was published by Vivendi Universal Games under their Black Label Games publishing label. In North America, it was released for Xbox and Game Boy Advance in September, and for PlayStation 2 and Windows in October. In Europe, it was released for Xbox, Windows and Game Boy Advance in November, and for PlayStation 2 in December. The game is an officially licensed adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1954 novel, The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume in his The Lord of the Rings. Although the game was released roughly a year after Peter Jackson's film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and several weeks prior to his The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, it has no relationship with the film series. This is because, at the time, Vivendi, in partnership with Tolkien Enterprises, held the rights to the video game adaptations of Tolkien's literary works, whilst Electronic Arts held the rights to the video game adaptations of the New Line Cinema films. EA chose not to publish a game based on Jackson's Fellowship film, although they did incorporate some of the plot and footage into their 2002 Two Towers game, which was released a few weeks after Vivendi's Fellowship game. The Fellowship of the Ring received mixed reviews, with critics praising the fidelity to the source material, but finding the combat rudimentary and repetitive, and the graphics poor. Many critics also compared the game's depiction of Middle-earth unfavorably with the darker depiction seen in the films. Although the game was a financial success, selling over one million units across all platforms, it was heavily outsold by EA's The Two Towers, which sold almost four million units. Vivendi initially planned to make two sequels to the game, covering all three books in the trilogy, but the first sequel, called The Lord of the Rings: The Treason of Isengard (a discarded title for Tolkien's Two Towers book), developed by Surreal Software and slated for release in late 2003, was cancelled late in development.