One week on, Hitman 3 has recouped its development costs

One week of sleuthing, stealthing and stabbing later, Hitman 3 breaks even and becomes profitable for developer IO Interactive. 

Released a week ago today, Hitman 3 is a stellar end to IO's assassination trilogy, a game Andy Kelly called IO's "most creative and surprising assassination sim yet" in his Hitman 3 review. Plenty of others must've thought so too, with the developer now announcing that Agent 47's closing act has fully recouped its development costs.

"We have been really happy with the Hitman 3 journey," IO CEO Hakan Abrak told GamesIndustry.biz. "It has been a labour of love between our fans and everyone at the studio. As the developer and publisher, we are immensely proud that we can say Hitman 3 is already profitable. We have recouped the total project costs in less than a week. That puts us in a really good place and allows us to confidently move forward with our ambitious plans for future projects."

Hitman 3 is the first in the trilogy to be fully developed and published by IO, following collaborations with Square Enix and Warner Bros. for Hitman 1 and 2 respectively. For Abrak, keeping everything in-house put the studio in a better position to market the game it was making.

"Having that focus early on has kept us on a path that we all believed in. Everyone at the studio was behind the vision for the game and they know the Hitman universe better than anyone."

Now that 47 is taking a well-earned break, IO is moving on to work on that untitled James Bond game—a project that may well turn out to be a full espionage trilogy. The developer is possibly the best-suited studio around for creating a Bond adaptation. With Hitman ending on a high note, we're expecting great things from IO's take on the legendary super-spy.