IO Interactive Recoups Hitman 3 Development Costs in Under a Week

Their shareholders will be very happy, hitman is already working out big for them!

This really is a big accomplishment, and it shows that some of these relatively big developers might do better on their own rather than tied to a giant corporation and their directives.

that's great to hear. This developers are really passionate about their work and deserve the best.
I will buy it as soon as i finish with some other games (maybe at a better price too)

I'm really happy they were able to get away from Square Enix and Warner Bros, and still make this a success self-publishing it.

Well happy for them they not only escaped from Square but with their ips in tow and now selling great go IO now make a sequel to Mini Ninjas please?...for me? XD

@Grimwood that is probably why they made their money back so quickly. Used all of the same assets and mechanics as Hitman 2 and only had to make new maps--how expensive could it really be?

When there are new consoles out and people are just hungry for new games. I mean everyone hyped and forgot RESISTANCE FALL OF MAN 😆

@Logonogo @grimwood

A little unfair to say considering they pour a lot of effort and passion into designing its levels. They never look to rush these games out and go at their own pace. Also the folks at IO are a lovely bunch. Watch the Noclip documentaries on YT if you haven't already, it definitely enriches the game.

@JB_Whiting I am not doubting their enthusiasm or commitment but was just hoping for a fully fleshed out new game with some innovation rather than what is basically an expansion pack that might as well have been DLC

I'm very very glad for them! I only played 1 for now but I loved it and certainly plan to get the other 2 as well.
This is such good news in this era of mergers and acquisitions, as it shows that a lot of dedication and good management can go a long way.
I definitely prefer to support them, rather than a mega corporation.

@Grimwood geez is there one game you like? One? 😂

@themightyant Prey is so, so good.

@themightyant definitely second that! Immersive sims are just so special, it's a shame nobody makes them anymore.
Though with ever-ballooning development costs, and the vast majority of people basically buying the same 3 copy/pasted franchises over and over, I'm sure they're not the most profitable genre you could make, seeing how much care it requires 😕

@Logonogo

There are definitely gameplay mechanics (like fiddly contextual prompts, and lack of fluidity in 47's movement) that are in dire need of a makeover. Let's hope after Bond they'll deliver a full-fat, next-gen instalment!

@get2sammyb
I wouldn't worry about that really, IO are not dumb they know that Hitman 1 and 2's success was heavily based around them supporting those games post release really well.

I don't play the Hitman games but I can appreciate a great series when I see it. IO deserves all the praise and money for doing such a great job with these 3 games and I am excited to see what they do with Post-Launch support and with 007.

@themightyant I think that's apples and oranges. Dishonored 2 is really right in Bethesda's wheelhouse and I don't see that likely to fade away, especially post-MS acquisition. Deus Ex MD was a weird launch. They launched it weird, the game was good, but...compressed? It was the weird middle child of a trilogy without the third chapter. They claimed it didn't sell well but they also messed up the launch. And they haven't retired the series, every few years they make claims they have ideas for the next installment and that it's an important franchise, but that the team was working on Avengers, and they don't have the ability to work on both at once. Now that Avengers pretty much hit the ground face first, they're probably looking at Deus Ex again.

Amazing! So happy for them! Really hoping for some post release content like the elusive targets.

@NEStalgia Mankind Divided was great, but I did have the very strong feeling when I finished it of, where’s the rest of it? I really like what Eidos Montreal has done with Deus Ex and hope they get a chance to flesh it out further. Also, Doom is great! It’s incredibly well designed. Thanks for the recommendation.

@Jimmer-jammer hah, yeah, i had that same feeling. I think everybody did. It was clear they cut content and rushed it out incomplete, and after the masterpiece (albeit an ugly looking masterpiece lol) that was human revolution it stood out even more. If the third game came out relatively quickly we could have excused it as the Mass Effect 2 of Deus Ex. But instead it just kind of taunts us, dangling there. Prague: The Game. What was there was great. Golem City went on a little too long, though.

At least it's still better than Invisible War..............

Edit:. Glad to hear you're enjoying Doom, BTW. I thought you might!

@NEStalgia I have many opinions about Deus Ex (as one might guess from my avatar) but I kind of feel like it’s time for a new studio to get the IP. Mankind Divided was a solid entry in the series, but the formula was starting to show its age.

I want to see a studio make an immersive sim that feels as fresh as the original Deus Ex did two decades ago.

@themightyant @RevDrGalactus I'd actually argue to the contrary. I think the foundational elements of the "immersive sim" subgenre have never been stronger or more prevalent. In a sense "everything is now an immersive sim, therefore, nothing stands out as an immersive sim."

I've seen people say similar things before, but too often it comes down not so much to "the immersive sim" being scarce so much as "people really want Warren Spector's old design ideas back", and nobody really makes Warren Spector type games anymore....not even Warren Spector. Heck the term itself was his invention..... (or at least someone at Looking Glass depending on who you believe.)

The core of the immersive sim is, really, player choice and emergent gameplay. Something that was really rare when he released Thief and System Shock, but something that's almost everywhere now. Most of what made the subgenre special is more or less standard game design now, so it doesn't stand out anymore. The soaring success of Breath of the Wild was an ode to the immersive sim. As is the success of the Hitman trilogy. The big, deep WRPGs (and Deus Ex, of course) have arguably always been immersive sims, since before Spector coined the term. Elder Scrolls, Fallout, etc. Most open world games embody it as well. Ubisoft games have become more and more immersive sims over time, including Assassin's Creed. MGSV, Shadow of Mordor. And, of course, for better or worse, CP2077 more or less sold itself on the promise of being one, sold 13M preorders....and then revealed its hand to be not quite that. But it does demonstrate people want that.

I think the declaration of the death of the immersive sim is very premature. We're inundated by them, in reality!

@themightyant I think I see what you're getting at. And I can see the exclusion of BotW. Systems-driven gameplay versus a gated choice design. And yet, if we really review most of the world of gaming, we could end up at a problem that "immersive sim" doesn't really mean much, and isn't an actual genre.

It's a subgenre by name that might be a little too limiting, not so much of an actual genre definition but to a set of design choices made by a particular team of devs. If you go through the list of games that have been categorized "immersive sim" almost none of them are not made by Looking Glass, Origin, Ion Storm or subsequent companies formed by key people of Looking Glass/Origin/Ion Storm. Bioshock was Ken Levine (the guy whom Spector says invented the term "immersive sim" to begin with) and was supposed to be a System Shock successor.

Dishonored, Arkane, again, two of the original Deus Ex, Ultima VI, System Shock guys.

And that's probably why it's hard to put a pin on what defines the genre. It's not really particular features that define it, so much as a "feel" that really came about from one group of dev's designs, and way of blending these other now-common attributes together. So mostly , you miss Looking Glass

I also think a few of the defining attributes have fallen out of fashion. First person perspective, large inventories of little items to manage, text-heavy presentation. I imagine a lot of that comes down to a mix of the rise of consoles changing the way these formerly PC-oriented genres have to be designed, the complexity of testing complex inventories and text trees in ever more complex game environments, and the need for "wide appeal" of less dedicated and, dare I say it, nerdcore audiences. When Deus Ex came out, only ubernerds were playing video games. Games have become decidedly less nerdy in focus as they reach for the mass-entertainment-media market.

If the immersive sim actually is a genre....and actually has a future. I'd say its future lives in VR.

Will that be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. Will it happen someday?....

I do think you'll enjoy Hitman though. It's not quite the same thing as the Looking Glass-like genre. It's not an RPG, it's not a choose your narrative in the same sense. It's not narrative heavy at all, and doesn't go hard into world building. But its world is consistent, and it's one of few games that really can immerse me in that sense. On the surface it's a stealth game, but I think there's an argument to be made that it's actually a puzzle game masquerading as a stealth game. There's no dialogue trees as such. 47 is a pseudo-silent protagonist (he speaks but very little, only in relation to certain scripted situations, should you approach them to begin that path.) There's no abilities, but inventory plays an important role, even if it's a very streamlined inventory. Ultimately the world is a puzzle, and figuring out which combination of solutions to use is up to you (or if you're going for all the unlocks, replaying and aiming to use all of them in different combinations) matters.

Fantastic game series, very immersive and engrossing (and addictive) game series. It won't scratch the Looking Glass itch, but it might just numb it, as it plugs into some of the same nerve centers!

@themightyant I have a love-hate relationship with Thief. I adored the core concepts and feel of the series, and loved what the first one started as. And then it went down the supernatural rabbit hole, and I couldn't follow it. That ruined what made Thief cool to me. Thief II fixed that, and it was all the good stuff. But fans for some reason hated that and wanted the supernatural back. Then Thief III inexplicably became a hardcore Silent Hill type horror sim half-way through the game. It was praised as one of the best horror experiences ever, at the time. But the problem was I didn't buy Thief to have a Silent Hill clone...... It was such a weird tonal shift. Horror fans love it because the horror was so good, but it's like playing Horizon Zero Dawn 4 and half-way through the game you discover time travel, go back to the prehistoric era, and play a village building sim while gathering berries amidst real dinosaurs. Even if it's a great village building sim, it isn't the game I bought.

VR is in such a weird place. It's niche, and due to the nausea issue it can't be for everyone, by nature. That really limits it ever becoming some transcendental experience to redefine media. And yet, it's really the only remaining place for entertainment to go, is to become truly first person immersive. Maybe someone will eventually invent some way of doing it that doesn't involve nauseating, heavy, tethered headsets that make you look like Robocop, and also doesn't involve psychotropic drugs that make you actually believe you're Robocop. It's in a weird limbo. And Zuck owning the biggest name in the field isn't helping matters. They're not a very creative company. They're a bunch of smarmy marketers with a casino operator's mentality that mostly just copy or buy whatever they want. Even their core product isn't original, it's just better marketed with more clever casino gatchas. That kind of company holding the keys to an entire tech field is just depressing.

I had high hopes for where Sony was going to take it, but after Ryan's bizarre dithering on VR, I think that ship sailed too. "We'll wait for someone else to make it a commercial hit, then copy them." He should work for Zuck.

@themightyant Lots of games straddle genres, but the whole game straddles genres, or the whole series does. So the nature of the game is a mix of things. That was weird because a series that wasn't horror (but had supernatural aspects), starts out for half the game with a dark-ish gothic-ish setting and fee, but plays and goes on like the rest of the series, and then you get to that one mission in an abandoned asylum turned burned down orphanage and much of the game becomes psychological survival horror inside a memory of the old asylum - very Silent Hill. It's so jarring. And if you're a horror fan maybe it was a cool surprise - but I don't do horror....so it was jarring and unwelcome. Needless to say I abandoned it there, but did read the walkthroughs and synopsis and didn't regret it

Since the world is intisocial now, it's as good a time as any to put a helmet on and declare your intent to keep other humans far away from you! But yeah the fact that there's no way to look and feel like an idiot in a VR helmet will always be a problem. I don't see how a rectangle displaying a moving picture can remain the center of entertainment forever....and yet I don't see what currently acts as VR doing better. Hololens is pretty cool, but very clearly far outside consumer cost intent. I now they'll make it "social" by putting it also on a screen, but it just doesn't work. Catch 22. To be immersive you have to shut out the world. And if you shut out the world it's inherently isolating in uncomfortable ways. Even if you're alone, which is weird.