I remember when Hitman 2016 came out. It was a divided response between 'This is the best entry in the series since silent assassin' and 'theres too much bullshit around it'. Long story short it was another western game Square Enix expected extremely unrealistic numbers for while apparently ordering it be a games as a service episodic release which made it very hard to know when to market it, initial release at one episode or when its all complete and you can sell it all months later. Throw in Denuvo that made pcs run like shit when playing the game and always online and a visually impressive and mechanically excellent stealth-puzzle game got totally forgotten.
Personally i treated it as a shame and ignored it till IO went independent and the game was then sold as a single package without the denuvo and all of a sudden it was a sleeper darling that everyone i know into stealth games was playing. IO was free to make Hitman 2 what they wanted under their own terms and everyone was excited.
Then it turned out it was episodic, always online stuff. Again. This time IO made it look like their new publisher Warner Bros. were behind it but folks were in full on 'fool me twice, shame on me' and some footage of a magic corner curving flying briefcase didn't help. So here we are 2 years later and you have videos like this from noted stealth evangelists:
Now Hitman 2 -which if you own the first lets you import all the first games maps but remastered and is apparently excellent- is selling like shit and you can find it on places like Amazon below £30 when PSN is still charging £55-90 for it like it came out last week.
So did anyone buy it? or is this the bomb that kills IO? the best game nobody ever bought?