IO Interactive’s Project 007, the studio’s upcoming game based on the James Bond license, could still be a long way off.
Industry analyst and serial Tweeter DarkDetective was pouring through IO’s recent quarterly earnings and noticed several indicators that point to Project 007 still being years away.
IO Interactive has published its Annual Report 2021/22 (year ending 31st March 2022).
Revenue came in at DKK 538m (~$72.4m), +7% YoY, more than 2x management expectations. Mostly thanks to a Xbox Game Pass deal.
Looking into mobile dev.
Project 007 scheduled after March 2025? pic.twitter.com/JlnZ5J4kyJ
— DarkDetective (@DarkDetectiveNL) August 31, 2022
As DD correctly points out, with predicted revenue somewhere in the region of $AU95 million, IO’s fiscal year looks to be tracking quite well. “IO Interactive’s main source of revenue is still Hitman 3 released back in 2021,” read its earnings notes. “Hitman 3 overperformed the first year against the initial sales budget and performs well in Year 2 with the release on Steam.” Hitman 3 also launched on Game Pass, along with the first two games in the recent trilogy, which has also provided a lift in IO’s fortunes. However, with no new games to launch in the near future, IO is preparing for a lean couple of years ahead. “We had a couple of years with solid revenue and profits, due to the launch of a title,” said IO’s earnings notes regarding its fiscal outlook. “There is a risk the next couple of calendar years, the EBITDA (Editor’s note: that’s Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) and profits will drop. This is due to long production phases ahead, before the next releases hit the market. More precisely fiscal (year) 24 and 25 estimates show a significant decrease.”
So what does all this tell us? It tells us that Project 007 may already be in production at IO but that it has a long way to go before seeing the light of day. Based on IO’s current projections, it would seem reasonable to expect a release date sometime in Q3 or Q4 2025.
The notion of a long wait shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. It’s been a long time between drinks for 007-themed video games, mostly because people kept making bad ones. Activision abruptly pulled the Quantum of Solace, Blood Stone and 007 Legends games from sale in 2013 before sheepishly admitting several days later that the 007 licenses had been revoked. The situation was embarrassing enough that Activision announced it would avoid licensed games in future (it didn’t).
After that, the 007 license languished. In 2014, then-Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner expressed an interest in securing the license, and rumours about a Telltale game called 007: Solstice circulated in 2017. Unfortunately, the company went under before such a game was ever confirmed. In 2016, Curve Games president Dominic Wheatley expressed a similar interest in the license, but, again, no game was ever announced.
And then, in 2020, IO Interactive ended the drought by announcing Project 007. Will it be able to turn Bond’s video game fortunes around? We’ll have to wait (quite a while) and see.
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