When it comes to action franchises, Hitman couldn’t be more classic and its developer studio, IO Interactive knows how to take advantage of that. Not being afraid of stirring things up with its core mechanics, the team is now shifting its focus into the next Hitman game, moving more and more staff towards its development.
The news came through IO Interactive’s official website and were recently highlighted by the Playstation magazine (January 2020 issue 170), where the studio states that the next Hitman game is “well in development”. The post reads:
After 13 months of full-time support and content for Hitman 2, we’re now at a place where we are looking increasingly to the future. In real terms, we’re moving more and more of the Hitman 2 team to join the next Hitman game, which is well underway.
This comes as both a blessing and a curse. Although now we know that IO Interactive is working right now on a new Hitman title, continuous support for the previous title will start to slow down. Undeniably, the team did an excellent job bringing new content and polishing to the game, something we can expect from the next one as well. Given the fact that IO wants to support their games for at least a year, it seems almost unlikely for the next game to release on the current generation consoles. Due to that fact, it seems more logical for the next Hitman game to release sometime in 2021.
Until then though, IO Interactive will still have lots of work to do. The studio is also working on another unannounced title in partnership with Warner Bros. There’s no developer update or an official announcement about that project yet, so we can’t be sure about its release window.
If IO Interactive intends on shipping both Hitman and its second title in the next two years, then we are up for a crazy next-gen launch. However, it all comes down to announcements and up until now, we have none. We shall expect the studio to start dropping the first hints sometime late next year.
