Xs for eyes: EA officially cancels Steven Spielberg's Project LMNO

Hey, Guillermo del Toro, you're not the only filmmaker-turned-videogame-designer on the block!

Oh, wait. Yes you are.

After word that Project LMNO's now destined to be just as much of a functional videogame as a bowl of alphabet soup got out via industry vet Jake Kazdal, EA confirmed the cancellation.

"EA maintains its relationship with Steven Spielberg. EA has ceased development of LMNO. EA continually monitors development resources and adjusts resources as appropriate. No new title announcements," the publisher told Joystiq.

Odds are, the game's actually been six feet under for quite some time, seeing as most of its dev team was laid off almost two years ago. However, EA insisted that the game remained in production despite being thoroughly wobbled by that crippling blow.

Kazdal, who apparently gave the project his all for a whopping two-and-a-half years, didn't quite have an answer as to why the star-studded project ultimately went super nova.

"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," he said during a recent episode of the 8-4 Play podcast.

"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."

Shame, that. The fruit of Spielberg's labor that didn't rot before it was ready to be plucked from the tree, Boom Blox, was a smash-hit with critics. Unfortunately, while its sales were far from terrible, it didn't quite become the Wii mainstay EA was hoping for. Here's hoping a couple missteps haven't caused Spielberg to rage-quit game development entirely.