In a recent interview with Game Informer, some of the key members of IO Interactive talked about all the tough situations that they have gone through over the past years and expressed their feelings about leaving the Hitman series for a while after Hitman 3.

IO Interactive is always known best for its Hitman titles. Despite working on a few other games like Kane & Lynch series, the Danish developers have spent most of their time with Agent 47's deadly contracts. The next mainline installment of the franchise is about to launch in less than a month, and with it, IO will stop working on the Hitman franchise for a while, shifting the focus on their recently announced Project 007.

Hakan Abrak, the CEO and co-owner of IO Interactive, revealed in a recent interview that Project 007 is a new start for IO Interactive to have more IPs to be known for rather than only the Hitman series. Abrak said:

Hitman and IO Interactive are very, very closely knit, obviously. But I think, moving forward, IO should not necessarily be mentioned as ‘The Hitman studio IO Interactive,’ but first and foremost, people should think about IO Interactive as IO Interactive first, creators of different IPs and a place of creativity where Hitman is definitely one of our children, but there are going to be more children in the future. And one of them is 007.

That being said, the studio won't leave the Hitman franchise once and forever. They will surely get back to Agent 47's adventure sometime in the future with more creative plans, but the purpose is to provide a broader number of options for the studio when it comes to picking a franchise as the next new project.

The World of Assassination trilogy started in 2016 with Hitman, which sold much lower than expected. After that commercial failure, Square Enix considered selling IO to another publisher, but the studio managers decided to become independent and stand on their own feet. Now, they have developed Hitman 3 and they will launch it as well, which is a great milestone for a studio that became independent just over three years ago.

Hitman 3 will be available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and PC. A VR version of the game will also hit PSVR sometime in the future.