Agent 40 Winks: Hitman Cancelled, Uncancelled
Not silently assassinated
Hello there. Things have sounded a little unhappy at Hitman and Kane & Lynch devs IO Interactive for a while now, in the wake of 2012's Hitman: Subtitle achieving neither the acclaim or the spondoolies it was hoped to. Last year, the Square Enix-owned Danish studio saw half its workforce removed from their jobs, along with claims that the remainder would get to do nothing but Hitman games. Yesterday, reports circulated that the Next Jennifer Hitman game had been quietly garotted. That claim, despite being made on a Square Enix Montreal senior game designer's LinkedIn profile, has now been denied.
Said Squeenix to Gamespot:
"There's a bit of confusion around the Hitman projects currently in development at Square Enix-owned studios and so we wanted to take the time to clarify what each studio is working on to clear up some of this confusion.
"Io-Interactive is developing a new, AAA Hitman game that will be coming to PC and next-gen consoles and Square Enix Montreal is fully focused on mobile development of games some of which are related to the Hitman franchise. We look forward to sharing more details about these titles later this year."
The troublesome LinkedIn claim, from Square Enix Montreal senior designer Richard Knight, how appears to have been removed.
I suppose a couple of years ago I'd have been screaming blue murder about even the suggestion that Hitman series might be sent for a permanent nap, but 2012's Subtitle was such a grim affair that part of me wouldn't object to it all stopping now while I can still hang on to happy memories of Blood Money. Let's just hope that whatever new scribbles are on IO's tear-stained drawing board related to what makes Hitman Hitman rather than what might make Hitman more mass-market.