Square-Enix’ Next ‘Hitman’ Won’t Hit Until 2016

Briefly: I’m starting to wonder why AAA titles even get release dates any more.

Another week passes, and it’s revealed that another hotly anticipated title won’t make its 2015 release. Last week it was Ninty’s own Star Fox Zero, and today it’s Square-Enix’ assassination simulator, Hitman.

Developer IO-Interactive spilled the beans earlier today in its latest blog post, stating that “Moving a launch date is never an easy decision, we know it’s frustrating to have to wait a bit longer for the game, but we truly believe it will mean we can deliver a better launch and overall experience. We’ll share more details next week about the full release schedule and scope of HITMAN in general so keep a look out for that.”

An interesting infographic was also released, detailing just how large Hitman is in comparison to Hitman: Absolution, and also showing off just how much stuff there is to do in the game’s Paris locale. Pretty impressive stuff.

Here’s the full delay announcement:

It’s safe to say HITMAN is the biggest venture we’ve ever undertaken at Io-Interactive. Not just in terms of scope and ambition but also in terms of the size of the game world itself. The playable area and density of our locations goes beyond anything we’ve built before. We’re striving to create a series of living, breathing worlds in those locations and we get pretty obsessed about every detail that you’ll experience.

 

On top of that, we’re going for a new release model where we put out a good chunk of the game when it begins and then release the remaining locations over time. We want to make absolutely sure you all get the best possible experience when you join, so we’ve made the difficult decision to move the initial release date to March 2016. These few extra months will mean we can add more to the launch content of the game, more than we had originally planned, and then follow with a tighter frequency of updates, which ultimately will create a better game for everyone. And in the end, that’s what we’re all looking for.

 

To give you a sense of the scale when it comes to our various locations, we’ve compared our Paris Showstopper mission to the largest level in Hitman: Absolution. As you can see, lots of challenges, plenty of space to set up death traps, and a huge supply of targets for Contracts mode.

 

Moving a launch date is never an easy decision, we know it’s frustrating to have to wait a bit longer for the game, but we truly believe it will mean we can deliver a better launch and overall experience. We’ll share more details next week about the full release schedule and scope of HITMAN in general so keep a look out for that.

Disappointed? What will you be playing in December now? Fallout 4 still? Yeah, me too.