Nooooooo.... Hitman was so good. I wish we had any insight into how it did sales-wise, though I guess this is, at least, an indication that IO wasn't meeting Square's expectations.

@scottjay01: It wouldn't be AS eyebrow raising if they didn't have a history of throwing Western devs under the bus to compensate for their first-party lagging in sales. (Hitman: Blood Money and Tomb Raider, both of which sold ~4 million were thrown to the wolves as "disappointing" after FFXIII received lackluster sales and some fairly critical backlash), so while I'm sure FFXV sold very well, think about the development cycle and how much it was restarted whole cloth to REALLY get an idea for what they needed to sell (I think I recall hearing it'd have to sell 10 million copies in the first month to even START breaking even).

Again: taken in a vacuum, this isn't too bad, but with their history and given how long the legs on Hitman have been (as well as the positive exposure it's gotten them), it seems like a rather old-fashioned move.

I guess we can look forward to ASSASSIN in two years.

I/O should make one last level update that's just 47 going through an "anonymous" video game publishing office to kill the executives.

May as well give Squeenix the finger on your way out the door.

I haven't been this bummed by videogame news in such a long time. Hitman 2016 turned me into a fan and now I feel like the rug got pulled under me. That's such a shame.

Again as I've stated before here and other places I know people whom worked on FFXV, Mid way and right to the end it wasn't 10 years in development, the old management and higher ups did not like the original game story and concept nor the attention it took away from other titles such as XIII, it was shelved upsettingly, for a long period of time to focus on other more further along titles, even though it being more popular than almost anything they had. When that management changed, It was restarted (Twice if you count the platform move but that was more due to the PS3 being so unsuccessful and on its tale end) once in 2012 when it was sadly taken away from Nomura (Whom lets not forget is a star for them but was totally thrown under the bus over this), the story was then butchered and the team worked wonders with what they had left.

@undeadpool: I agree with you totally that they have done this before but not just to western devs.

In this case though last year and the year before allot of their western stuff did under perform I mean I remember Deus Ex people really being disappointed in that.

Again I knew atleast 6 people that all buy allot of games but enjoyed watching hitman after it was out but it wasn't for them. So it does make me wonder did it do well ?

What a bummer.

Square Enix is becoming Konami fuck this company.

Square Enix is no stranger to wildly unrealistic expectations. E.g. The Tomb Raider reboot and Sleeping Dogs.

I saw buying Eidos as a smart move at the time but their actual management of the company doesn't seem to be all that effective.

The fact that they're doing this while simultaneously letting Tetsuya Nomura take seven goddamn years to make KH3 is the part that makes me especially mad.

@relenus: Not to mention the Final Fantasy Versus XIII into FFXV debacle.

It's like they are only swinging for the fences.

@hassun: God I forgot about that.

Does he just have massive amounts of dirt on all the SE execs or what?

Now Sega is gonna buy them out and there gonna milk you dry with DLC the Sega way.

The big question is going to be whether IO is going to keep or buy the Hitman license (or the rest of their library) should it survive this. IO is a damn good studio, but they'd be a much more attractive investment for other publishers if they came with their big hits.

Also, just in general, Square Enix is at the tipping point now. The nonsense that's happened with IO, Tomb Raider and Deus Ex, and the rumors (I think they were more than just rumors) that their western devs will become a Marvel game factory make me feel like Square Enix is about to become an utterly boring publisher.

@babychoochoo: The game definitely received more coverage on this site than most anywhere else.

AND THEN THIS SHIT

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/05/11/new-thief-game-and-movie-adaptation-in-the-works.aspx

What are you doing Square Enix?

Just after what is probably the best stealth game of all time the HITMAN franchise is going to die a slow, mobile and garbage spin-off fueled death. Fuck square enix and fuck everything about this.

The only reasonable person. Hitman is the modern Metroid of people thinking way, way more people like it than it is financially liked. You know why Metroid is dead? Because it is literally one of the worst selling nintendo franchises that's still alive. One kirby game outsold the entire metroid prime trilogy.

Meh, didn't care for the new Hitman. I'd prefer a new Freedom Fighters personally.

@taesoawful: Not really, you have to take into account that they probably lost money or at least didn't make a lot on FFXV due to its horrendously long development cycle.

Good God. That last Thief game was uninspired as hell. I got it free and still couldn't bring myself to play much of it. Yet they're doubling down, scratch that, tripling down on that franchise?

Meanwhile, in the Square Enix boardroom:

"No, no, no. You don't understand. This video game movie will be the one that puts video game adaptations on the map."

I'm really looking forward to their follow up. Man-Hitter.

What the fuck. No one liked that thief game. I can't even think of a way you could make a good thief game. Dishonered, maybe the best version you can make in the vaguely historical first person stealth genre, sucks. Yes, you heard me. Dishonored is a bad stealth game. Because of the first person perspective, time period and the whole design taken out of system shock and deus ex these games can't be anything but flimsy and bad.

The stealth feels bad, the incentive design structure is all wrong and the tools the give you are either useless, boring or not even geared towards stealth. But sure, make a sequel to the garbage fire that was the Thief reboot instead of making a sequel to the best stealth game of all time.

Between that and Final Fantasy XV it seems like Square has unlimited patience when it comes to their domestically developed franchises.

IO did an incredible job homing in on what 'Hitman' was after kinda losing their way with Absolution. In addition their use of the episodic model was brilliant and the way they kept players engaged after the fact that game after the fact with elusive targets was exemplary. Their reward? The chopping block. Imagine if Bethesda sold off id after completely turning around the DOOM IP.

Where does this leave Season 2 of Hitman? Without a publisher backing them I'm assuming that means its either put on hold or scaled down. This sucks.

I was holding on to $60 to buy Season 2 this year. Now I guess I should put that toward other games instead.

I always had the impression that Hitman sold really well is that not the case? What a damn shame. :(

I've played 3 great ones actually.

Thief is not the issue here dude.

I feel really bad for IO, they are the biggest developer we have here in Denmark and one of only a small handful. I hope they will make it out without a lot of job losses and if at all possible (probbaly not) get to hold on to the Hitman IP.

This is so bizarre. Has to be Square Enix Japan making these decisions surely.

@l33t_haxor: I don't think it did :/ I got the impression that nobody except for gb was really talking about it to any great extent.

That is such a shame. Especially if IO actually loses the Hitman name over this bullshit.

I'm not that surprised HITMAN didn't sell that well though. I like it because it brought Absolution's outstanding technology and contract mode on one side, and the more traditional Hitman gameplay on the other together. But I don't love it since the whole "live" garbage was entirely pointless, even (psychologically) detracting from the experience. I'm neither willing nor able able to structure my life around "appointments" in order to experience a huge chunk of the game at this point in time. That shit is nice for GB content but a straight-up bad idea for regular players of a singleplayer game.

In the end the last two games are both interesting and well-made detours from the glorious classic Hitman games: Silent Assassin and Blood Money. Still, it's astounding how Eidos' excellent run of games under Square Enix seems to end on such a downer now.

Starring the enigmatic Operative 36. Can't wait.

I usually do not get bummed out about video game news but this sucks. Hitman was great, and was looking forward to season 2

This just means they can release a whole new non-hitman game.

Shootman: Season 2, why is this new Shootman IP starting with a second season? You'll have to play to find out; what happened in season 1? Why was it covered up? Is the illuminati behind it?! You'll murder your way to find the answers, playing as operative 74, a bald lady with a QR code on her forehead. Shootman: Season 2, pre order now!!!

This news really bums me out. I feel like most people that wrote off the game on the episodic format might have actually enjoyed it if they gave it a chance. While I understand why it might have turned some people off, it really did make for a better game and experience than if it got released in a regular fashion.

I know it isn't but you can't help but to make the comparison. Thief was good 13 years ago. They tried making that game in 2014 and it sucked real bad. Dishonored did it better but it still sufferes from very big problems. It's just a fact that the design doc for this style of stealth game doesn't work anymore.

Contrast that with HITMAN: the best stealth game of all time. With that game they fixed most of the stuff that's been wrong with the genre basically since its inception. But now SE is burning it to the ground and putting its money into old ideas we know don't work. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

@pyrodactyl: Dishonored 1 and 2 are also good. My favorite game of all time is a first person stealth game (Deus Ex). I don't agree with your premise. You can make that type of game.

Off topic at this point.

I feel like both Hitman 2016 and Mankind Divided were guinea pigs in some sort of AAA game business model experiment and they suffered greatly for it. Really not happy about this whole deal, it's no way to treat such important long-running IPs.

Kingdom Hearts & Final Fantasy XV have triple the sales of the Hitman franchise when your game sells really well you'll always get time, the episodic model clearly wasn't brilliant looking at the numbers and it was very risky no one has tried it with a AAA game. Doom 2016 is not an apt comparision SE own the Hitman IP without them there is no season 2 its like Bethesda getting rid of id.

What a bummer, one of my top 5 games from this generation of consoles, and I have been eagerly awaiting news on season 2 since the end of last year when they confirmed that they would be doing one.

It just seems like Square has an inexplicably large amount of patience for their in-house studios work with FF15 and KH3, but has little for the western properties they acquired over a decade ago. It sort of makes you feel like what was the point of the Eidos acquisition in the first place. I would have assumed diversifying their production portfolio, but that was then-type thinking and today's decisions are being driven by now-type thinking.

Another time where being in the Giant Bomb bubble has warped my view of reality. GB is pretty much the only game media I take in these days, and seeing it all the time on here and on my PS4 feed from people like Dave Lang I assumed Hitman was a bona fide phenomenon. Real shame to hear this. If you're not one of Square Enix's precious Japanese developers they don't really have your back it seems.

It's not unbelievable that they could make a new IP that's very clearly Hitman in everything but name. But this sucks for anyone who loses their job.

That studio seemed like they were at their peak lately, but with video game sales always being a shadowy secret it's basically impossible to tell how well their games were doing financially.

In terms of western development, Square really seem to be putting all their eggs into the Marvel basket. I'm not sure I personally see the logic there. While Marvel is, outside Star Wars, the biggest media licence currently going, there's not really the strongest history of Super Hero games so they have to be damn careful about getting it right.

The purchase of Io for another publisher could be a good hearts and minds announcement at E3 not that I think that will necessarily happen, just a nice thought.

Did anyone else think that Square Enix has been on fire the past few years? Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Life is Strange, FFXV, Hitman, Nier are just a few games off the dome. The news recently has been upsetting...

I hope they get funded or picked up by another publisher. Maybe twitch/Amazon should purchase... could be a good fit.

I'll gladly pay $60 for a new Thief game, fuck yea.

Square Enix are the ultimate Silent Assassin's