Io-Interactive, developers of HITMAN, announced today that the game would be seeing a delay into March of 2016, missing its original release date of December 8th.
In a blog post, Io-Interactive states that the new HITMAN is the most ambitious entry in the series to date, and that the team is busy “…striving to create a series of living, breathing worlds in those locations and we get pretty obsessed about every detail that you’ll experience.” The blog post states that HITMAN will be six times the size of Hitman Absolution.
In addition to the ambition of the new game, comes the conspicuous way in which it will be released. I0-Interactive is doing something interesting by releasing the game in playable chunks, but charging the full retail price of $59 USD. HITMAN was also to be a digital only release in 2015 with the physical copies coming later in 2016 — no word on if the physical version of HITMAN has been pushed back.
This release strategy also plays a part in HITMAN‘s delay. Now players will receive more content when the game comes out in March 2016.
Io-Interactive seems allergic to the words episodic and early access when talking about HITMAN. Choosing instead to use ‘chunk’ to describe how the first playable portion of Hitman will be released — it’s an episodic-early-access-game. No amount of PR spin is going to make me think other wise.
Not much has been shown about HITMAN since its announcement; however, the strategy of the release and ambition have me interested in Agent 47’s near future.
