In a recent interview with The Game Business, IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak spoke on their approach towards the upcoming James Bond title 007 First Light and confirmed that it’ll share several elements from their highly successful Hitman series of games as the studio has gained “tons of experience now from World of Assassination, and tons of experience on how to extend a single-player experience by giving desirable free content to players.”
“I was the executive producer on [2012’s] Hitman Absolution, and I swore never to do more new toilets,” he added. “We were just doing new everything. It was just a throwaway. When we were doing the initial foundation on Hitman 2016, we built it in a way where we would do smart reuse.
“Without being too precise, Hitman 2016… let’s say it was a $100 million game. Hitman 2 was maybe $60 million. Hitman 3 was $20 million. And Hitman 3 was the highest Metacritic. It was 85, 84, and 87 Metacritic,” he said. “And it had very unique new locations.”
The CEO also added that working on their past Hitman games has enabled them to maintain a fine balance between going all-out while still being much less wasteful, which is going to impact the upcoming 007 title in several ways.
“Building this foundation, the brick system as we call it, where we can make an experience, like [new Hitman mission featuring Mads Mikkelsen] very quickly and efficiently,” he stated. “This was a really [important] part of us creating sustainable AAA production. I’m not going to sit here and say we are doing everything right. We’ll keep on trying to improve and be less wasteful, but still super ambitious.”
“The first objective with 007 First light is to come out with the best possible, most impactful journey for gamers. Again, without giving too much detail, you could expect that we’ll be applying some of our learnings from World of Assassination to Bond.”
007 First Light is a fresh new take on James Bond and is expected to come out sometimes in 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and the Nintendo Switch 2.
