Hitman developer rumoured to be working on a fantasy exclusive for Xbox

Hitman developer IO Interactive is rumoured to be working on an Xbox-exclusive fantasy game with dragons.

Several teases from industry insiders are all pointing into the same direction, and it’s not something that we’d have expected - IO Interactive might be working on an exclusive fantasy game in partnership with Xbox. This rumour comes to us from Windows Central Gaming, which posted a video on YouTube providing evidence and claims from insider contacts.

The first piece of evidence comes from a GamesIndustry.biz article which pours over at a talk given by Hakan Abrak, CEO of IO Interactive. In the keynote talk, given at GI Live: Online, Abrak talked about IO’s new Barcelona studio and the studio’s attempts to move away from Hitman. After talking about IO’s upcoming James Bond game, Abrak goes on to say that “we have created four IPs from scratch. We always have incubation and R&D going on. Without going into too much detail, we have a third universe that we're working actively on, which is a bit different and absolutely a love child.”

This was followed by a few teases from Jez Corden, a writer at Windows Central with industry contacts. Corden posted a tweet that just showed an image saying “Dragons?”. Corden also told Xbox fans to keep an eye on IO Interactive on a recent episode of the podcast Xbox Two.

According to the information that Windows Central has gathered, this project is part of a larger scheme that Microsoft is running to work with external AAA developers, so this might not be the last surprise that we get from Xbox in terms of partnerships. It’ll likely be a long time before we see anything from this IO fantasy title though, as it's reportedly still in the early prototyping stages and won’t be arriving on your Xbox Series X anytime soon.

IO Interactive is best known for its Hitman series of games, which offer players the chance to step into the sharp suit of Agent 47, assassinating targets in rich sandbox levels. With Project 007 in line as its next game, players might not have expected to see IO jump from games like this to a fantasy RPG, but given how excellent Hitman 3 was, it'll be interesting to see what they can do in another genre.

Xbox fans are still a little tender on the subject of exclusive dragon-themed games from respected developers, with the cancellation of Platinum Games’ Scalebound a few years ago. 

If you want to see what Xbox exclusives have been confirmed, check out our upcoming Xbox Series X games list.