Hitman dev's Project 007 could be three years away

IO Interactive has indicated Project 007 might not launch until after 2025.

This past week, IO Interactive published a full annual report (opens in new tab) for the 2021/22 fiscal year. Halfway through the report, IO Interactive's management takes a few sentences to look toward the studio's immediate future, which is where the hint at Project 007's release window comes in.

"There is a risk the next couple of calendar years, the EBITDA and profits will drop," the developer's management team writes. "This is due to long production phases ahead, before the next releases hit the market. More precisely fiscal 24 and 25 estimates show a significant decrease."

In theory, this means that IO Interactive doesn't have a planned game launch until at least the 2024/25 fiscal year. The "long production phases" can only be attributed to Project 007, as aside from Hitman 3's ongoing post-launch support for the coming months ahead, it's the only full game in production at IO Interactive.

Project 007 might've been announced in late 2020, but it seems as though the game has a particularly long road ahead of it before launch. Given that we know next to nothing about the game so far, aside from the fact that Hitman: Blood Money's director is returning to IO Interactive to helm the game, perhaps this shouldn't be a huge surprise.

We might not be getting a full new IO Interactive game for a few years yet, but there's still content rolling out for Hitman 3 over the coming few months. The game just got its first post-launch map in July, entirely free for all players, and the exciting rogue-like Freelancer mode should be arriving in the next few months, after being delayed to release in the latter half of 2022.

Here's why IO Interactive is the perfect home for a James Bond game.