This Is the Next Game IO Interactive Will Deliver
IO Interactive is working on Project Fantasy, a brand new online fantasy RPG IP, with development reportedly starting after the peak of the COVID pandemic around 2021.
There's no doubt these are celebratory days for IO Interactive, which launched last week the excellent 007 First Light that earned glowing praise in our full review and has already sold over a million and a half copies worldwide. IO has established itself over the years as a company that knows how to develop games (we'll exclude MindsEye here, which it only published), and now, after a successful James Bond game and massive success with the Hitman brand as well, the question arises - where do we go from here?
Well, IO Interactive itself isn't hiding its future intentions at all, and if you visit the company's website today, you can see that alongside Hitman and James Bond stands another solid content pillar currently going by the name "Project Fantasy," which IO describes as a completely new IP in its portfolio, set to eventually become an online fantasy role-playing game. It's not entirely clear where the project stands right now, but various reports including one from Eurogamer claim that quite a few developers are currently working on the game, and while we don't have the exact number, we do know that the development team for the project is "larger than that of the first game in the rebooted Hitman trilogy and smaller than the development team that worked on First Light," and that the size of this development team may change now that First Light has launched. A senior source at IO told Eurogamer that work on Project Fantasy began more or less after the peak of the COVID pandemic, which also aligns perfectly with rumors circulating around the company around 2021 claiming it was working on a new project connected to the fantasy genre.
As mentioned, we don't really have any substantial information about Project Fantasy right now regarding what it will look like, what its core mechanics will be, or when it's expected to launch. But after IO's string of successes lately, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what it delivers with its new project. It's important to note that IO currently intends to continue supporting its two strong brands, so this is definitely not the company's last word when it comes to Hitman and James Bond either.