Earlier this month, Hitman 3’s announcement appeared during Sony’s PlayStation 5 digital event. The reveal trailer confirmed a release window, platforms, and general tone of the new entry. However, it was unclear whether IO would join up with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment again for publishing purposes. Such a partnership isn’t in effect for this particular project. Instead, IO Interactive will develop and publish Hitman 3 itself.
IO Interactive community leads Travis Barbour and Clemens Koch announced IO’s plans during a recent stream on Twitch. Barbour notes that this move is an important step for the studio, a challenge the teams in Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden are ready to take on. Therefore, “pretty much everything that goes into Hitman 3 will come, one way or another, from IO Interactive,” Barbour explained. (The devs share this detail at the 13:00 timestamp in the recent Twitch stream, which now appears as an archived video.)
Square Enix still served as the franchise’s publisher for Hitman’s episodic release in 2016. In June 2017, Square Enix and IO Interactive went their separate ways, leaving IO an independent company with the rights to the Hitman IP. By early 2018, WB Games had stepped in to publish the Hitman project that eventually became Hitman 2.
IO Interactive’s Hitman 3 will come to the PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in January 2021. This upcoming entry marks the final of Agent 47’s adventures in IO’s World of Assassination trilogy. The studio is working to ensure fans who own Hitman and Hitman 2 can transfer previous missions to Hitman 3.
[Source: IO Interactive on Twitch]
