Hitman Franchise on Hiatus as IO Interactive Focuses on James Bond Game

IO interactive is putting its Hitman franchise on hiatus as it focuses on its long-anticipated James Bond game instead.

As reported by PC Gamer, IO Interactive chief creative officer Christian Elverdam told Eurogamer that it might be a while before fans get another major entry, though Hitman: World of Assassination will continue to be updated.

“Right now, a major, major new Hitman game… that’s a little bit on hiatus, as we’re building another agent fantasy that’s also taking up a lot of our time,” Elverdam said. “But obviously we’ll come back to beloved Agent 47. He’s still very much in the heart of this company.”

The “agent fantasy” Elverdam is talking about is, of course, the James Bond game that was announced in 2020, that currently has just a codename of Project 007. Very little has been revealed about it since, however, though we do know it will have an original story.

IO Interactive recently rebranded Hitman 3 as World of Assassination, folding in all previous Hitman Trilogy levels into the game and also launching the Freelance roguelike mode. The developer still has plans to support the game, even if it isn’t working on a full sequel just yet.

“I hope we can have our cake and eat it too, in the sense that we have such a wonderful platform where we can keep experimenting with what the formula can do and what people expect of it,” Elverdam said.

“And then at some point, obviously, as any creative, it would be nice to then go in and say, ‘Okay, well, with everything we’ve learned, what would that be if we had to re-articulate a sandbox. What would that look like?”

IO Interactive will certainly have plenty to keep it busy outside of Hitman though, as it announced in February that an online fantasy RPG is also in development at the studio. “We are embarking on a new adventure. One that expands our creativity, our capabilities, and in some sense our identity. We are building a new world, a new IP: an online fantasy RPG,” it said at the time.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.