Hitman 3 was one of the most eagerly anticipated games of 2021, and now that the game has finally seen a release, this third game in the current Hitman trilogy is doing pretty well.
Actually, Hitman 3 sold particularly well in its launch week, topping the UK charts for the week ending on January 23, as was recently reported on gamesindustry.biz. Hitman 3 sold 17 % more copies at launch than its predecessor as the outlet points out.
Danish developer IO Interactive’s game has pushed Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons to second place, although the difference is less than 1,000 copies sold as Games Industry has pointed out.
Nonetheless, this is an impressive showing for bald killer Agent 47 (Hitman 3’s protagonist), especially when compared to the previous entry in the series, Hitman 2. The 2018 game showed up at number 10 in the charts back then, although to be fair to Hitman 2 it did release in the ultra-competitive November launch windows (it did benefit from a marketing campaign featuring Sean Bean though).
Nonetheless, Hitman fans will be pleased to see Hitman 3 on top of the world if only for a week, more so taking into account that the list that includes heavyweights like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (number 5), Grand Theft Auto 5 (number 6) and FIFA 21 (number 10) as well as the aforementioned Animal Crossing: New Horizons at number 2 behind chart-topper Hitman 3.
Most of Hitman 3’s retail sales were on PS5 (49 %). This makes sense taking into account the visibility the game got during Sony’s PS5 show last year. Also, 25 % sold on PS4 (this and PS5 being the only platforms in which you can play the game’s cool VR mode). The remaining 27 % of copies sold on Xbox consoles.
That is all for retail sales, but it seems Hitman 3 has also enjoyed franchise-best digital sales. In a recent tweet, game makers IO Interactive said that the game had “the biggest digital launch in franchise history”.
HITMAN 3 has arrived!
And it’s the biggest digital launch in franchise history. pic.twitter.com/7j8rDkEhAa
— IO Interactive (@IOInteractive) January 22, 2021
This means it also topped 2018’s Hitman 2 when it came to digital sales, but with IO not revealing any sales figures we don’t know how big the margin of difference is.
It’s great, though, to see Hitman 3 become a success for IO Interactive, especially considering that 2016’s Hitman reboot (which kicked off the current “World of Assassination” trilogy) struggled when it came to sales despite it being one of the best Hitman games to date.
This led to publisher Square Enix dumping IO, with the company later joining forces with Warner Bros. to get Hitman 2 on the market (by contrast, Hitman 3 is a self-published game).
However, even though the Hitman franchise might no longer be under the umbrella of Japanese company Square Enix (with IO Interactive now being an independent studio) Square is still the distributor for the physical editions of the game nonetheless.
Also, there’s likely more to come from Hitman 3 too, as IO will surely be supporting the game post-launch with new missions and the elusive targets, one of the best features of the current run of Hitman games. This will be before the Danish outfit shifts gears in order to focus on their upcoming James Bond game, one which Hitman and 007 fans will surely be looking forward to.