Earlier this week Square Enix revealed that they would be cutting ties with IO Interactive. Â Disclosed in their financial report for investors, the news left Hitman fans scratching their heads as to what the future holds for this long-running franchise.
While the worst-case scenario would be for the Hitman franchise to go to the grave with Square Enix, a new rumor suggests that IO Interactive will retain the rights to the Hitman franchise and are in-fact working on a second season for the game.
The rumor comes from Gamestar, who says that they have sources that say IO is looking for other investors to publish this second Hitman season and that development is well underway with a 2018 release date.
This rumor should be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s good news for fans of Hitman hoping to see more from Agent 47 in the coming years if it ends up being true. Â The website says that they believe that IO will be making an official announcement to fans in the next week.
Square and IO tried something completely different with Hitman (2016) that seemed to work. Â Delivered in six episodes, Hitman managed to capture their audience’s attention throughout the entire year by releasing the game piece by piece. Â This culminated with a full Season 1 release that contained all of the episodes at the beginning of 2017.
As such a popular and long-running franchise, it’s hard to see a publisher not stepping up to invest in this series assuming that IO has some rights to the series. Â If not, it’s hard to see a scenario where Square Enix just abandons it. Â If the rumor holds true, we’ll find out in the weeks ahead.
