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I'm interested in why this is an HN post. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be, but I'm curious what other people find interesting about it since I don't see anything here besides an ordinary update from a game studio about their product plans.

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Rolling previous versions of a game into the latest, for free (for existing users) is pretty darned generous. The game itself is also highly likely to appeal the more established HN user: the assassination stuff is nothing more than a veneer over a space+time puzzle.

>the assassination stuff is nothing more than a veneer over a space+time puzzle.

Spoken like an actual assassin.

It takes one to know one I suppose?

Interesting transition towards games as a platform. Call of Duty Modern Warfare is kind of doing this too. There are games within games. Destiny is doing this too with expansion packs and making the base game free. They are enormous IPs, and I can see how Eidos might see how adding modules might be profitable and easier to service until they have technological potential (like a new or improved engine) to use for a new game.

I'd consider this an interesting intersection of software, business, and finance. There were a lot of games that tried the episodic release format (which many considered the future), but few ended up succeeding. Hitman is one of the last series still pushing this concept, and this final update is a pretty elegant bow on an otherwise messy pool of game content. It's not earth-shattering, but certainly curious and worth discussing.

Hitman 1 in this series was a bit of flop at the time because of the episodic model. I think they had the right idea, but not enough meaty content. Now with 21 maps and stacks of missions and puzzles doing regular map drops for $10 every few months seems like a really good way to create a really rich product.

I think it is a comment and a preview on what we are going to increasingly see. It's in my opinion an evolution of subscription-based monetization where IO _seems_ to be planting a flag that H3 is _the_ Hitman game for the forseeable future.

I am not sure how much that matters to B2B or less game-oriented B2C products but its interesting nonetheless because of the monetization take it seems to indicate.

Sure, but Hitman is hardly the most popular franchise out there and maybe the hundredth one to embrace this model. This would have been news like 10 years ago.

Fair question. In addition to what others have said about the business/technology model being moderately interesting (though admittedly not unique), I think the Hitman series and its problem-solving would suit the HN crowd pretty well.

Yeah after reading the whole thing I came here to answer that question myself. It felt like a bit of a nothing.

Nerds like video games or something. haha

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