‘Hitman’ 2016 dev reveals process behind episodic release decision, confirms PC system requirements

There has been quite the buzz when developer IO Interactive announced an episodic approach to releasing “Hitman” 2016. Now the developer has come to address some of the concerns of players, as well as share the journey on how the team had gone through the development phase.

In an interview with Ars Technica, Studio Head Hans Seifert touched on why the game is being released piecemeal instead of a standalone with continued upgrades. According to Seifert, the team had opted to ensure that piecemeal release will also allow for timely feedback to be incorporated into the development cycle. This is a different approach to how patches work in games nowadays, which sees a released product at the get-go before rolling out updates.

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“We want to create a platform for ‘Hitman’ and I know that that’s controversial,” Seifer said to Ars Technica. “There are sometimes things that you only realise could be better when you observe people playing, and we can make those improvements now because of this episodic structure.”

Another upside that Seifert thinks the new approach brings to the table is the ability to spread out what would otherwise be a day one purchase of the full game. He stated that, for those who want to access the game early on—instead of the full game come the end of 2016—can also enjoy the benefit of piecemeal pricing of the full game. It’s also advantageous that the season one is only set at US$60, with no microtransactions or additional DLC planned.

This does not come without potential drawbacks however, though this will mostly be on the side of the studio. Apart from not having a record of releasing post-launch follow-ups to a game, the developer will also have to combat the fact that the launch date is not wrap-up time. If anything, it’s like the start of a new cycle, as the developer listens to fan feedback that can be incorporated in the next expected release.

For fans who are expecting to play “Hitman” 2016 when it releases, the developer has already released the minimum and recommended specs for the PC to run the game. Gamepur has managed to obtain the figures.

Minimum requirements to play “Hitman” 2016 require the 64-bit Windows 7 PS, Intel CPU i5-2500K 3.3 GHz or the AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon HD 7870, DirectX 11 and 8GB of RAM. For the recommended specs of “Hitman” 2016, the only higher thing that need to change are the processor and graphics card. Instead, the higher specs require an Intel CPU Core i7 3770 3.4 GHz or AMD CPU AMD FX-8350 4 GHz, and a higher graphics card NVIDIA GPU GeForce GTX 770 or the AMD GPU Radeon R9 290.

For an earlier access to “Hitman” 2016, players can preorder the game and access the beta version. The beta will be out on the PS4 come Feb. 12, while the PC versions is coming a week later on Feb. 19. “Hitman” 2016 is set to release on March 11.