Why Hitman Developer IO Interactive Should Be Xbox’s Next Target

ign.com:

Danish developer IO Interactive made a name for itself over two decades ago when it released Hitman: Codename 47, the first in a long line of games starring everyone’s favorite sardonic assassin with a barcode tattooed on the back of his bald head. The series has spawned over half a dozen games, two major motion pictures, and lots of commercial success and critical acclaim.

Now, however, with the most recent Hitman game trilogy completed and all folded together under the Hitman: World of Assassination umbrella, IO Interactive is moving on to two other projects: a James Bond 007 game – of which little is known about so far – as well as a new online fantasy-RPG, which looks like it will come after Bond and we know even less about. Hitman, the studio says, is on hiatus for now.

All of this preamble is to set up what I’m about to say, and that is this: Microsoft, if it isn’t already, should be taking a long, hard look at IO Interactive as its next potential acquisition target – regardless of whether or not the Activision-Blizzard deal is approved by regulators, but especially if it isn’t. The fact is, there aren’t a lot of independent AAA game development studios left on the market. Embracer Group bought Gearbox (and a whole bunch of others), Sony took Bungie off the market, Microsoft has spent the past several years acquiring the likes of Obsidian, inXile, and Playground, etc.

To be fair, IO’s prowess outside of Hitman is, for now, relatively unproven. The original Xbox third-person strategy shooter Freedom Fighters was awesome, but that was a long time ago. The two Kane & Lynch games were also a long time ago, and they weren’t awesome. However, the studio seems like the perfect fit for James Bond, and if it works, that could