Io-Interactive is delighted to announce that Hitman; the now digital AAA episodic game, is now available for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

“We are doing something bold and new which has the potential to shape how we experience AAA games in the future,” said Hannes Seifert, Studio Head at Io-Interactive. “Hitman is back and it’s clearly the game many fans have been waiting for, so that feels pretty special. And this is just the start, now our live content begins and then in April we head to Sapienza. We have a game that will evolve, grow and improve over time and deliver the best ever Hitman experience.”

While the Prologue and Paris location is out as of today, the next location, Italy, will release sometime next month and Morocco releasing in May. Throughout 2016, Io Interactive will release monthly content along with three new locations: Thailand, United States and Japan.

The first Escalation Contract is available today, with the next one scheduled for Tuesday 16 March. These are in-game contracts created by Io-Interactive which gradually increase in difficulty the more you play them.

The first Elusive Target will appear in the game at some point in the next ten days. These targets appear for a limited time only, the first one will be live for 48 hours in the game. Players will only get one chance to take them out. This is a new character with bespoke dialogue and behavior in the game. Players will only receive their Elusive Target briefing once the new character has entered their location.

hitman-2016

Players who are eager to get back into Agent 47’s shoes can buy the Intro Pack for $15, or local equivalent. Following subsequent locations will be $10. Alternatively, players can buy the complete digital experience for $60. Future content update is included in the $60 price tag.

For those who rather have the full experience out of the box, the physical release of Hitman as slipped into early 2017.

Additionally, PC players will be happy to ear that the game supports Direct X12 straight out of the box. It also marks a milestone as its the first third party game to include DirectX12 at launch.

“It’s been great working with our friends at AMD to deliver an optimal HITMAN experience to PC users at launch,” said Hannes Seifert, Studio Head at Io-Interactive. “Hitman has a strong heritage on PC and we know some of our connoisseur fans will be delighted by what DX12 brings to the experience; and seeing the game running in 4K is breathtaking.”

DX12 enables fully multi-threaded rendering, allowing for much better use of modern multicore machines. It also features Asynchronous Compute, which unlocks more GPU performance, and it has manual resource management, allowing the game to use memory better. It delivers stunning 4K performance on high-end hardware. Optimization work for DX12 will be working from day one to deliver even more performance improvements at lower resolutions.

“We’re incredibly excited to strengthen our relationship with Square-Enix and Io-Interactive with the DirectX 12 update for Hitman,” said Roy Taylor, corporate vice president, alliances and content, AMD. “AMD has been an undisputed leader in delivering incredible DirectX 12 performance and fidelity to users with Radeon™ Graphics. And through features like DirectX 12 Asynchronous Compute and AMD FreeSync technology, Radeon graphics customers with systems of all budgets can tap into beautifully smooth gaming.”