Just a question that has occurred to me.
Has anyone calculated the total cost of someone buying the entire “World of Assassination” content for the first time with HITMAN 3 Deluxe Edition, and every single Access Pass?
Assuming they don’t bother with getting the original H2016 or H2 Standard/Gold but just the Access Passes.
I’m curious basically where this “one giant SKU” stands in terms of someone who comes in and is like: “Oh boy! I’ll grab it all!”
With the Access Passes and Deluxe of HITMAN 3 it’s a total of $210
$80 H3 Deluxe
$100 H2 Gold Access Pass
$30 H1 GOTY Access Pass
The cheaper route is to buy the games individually when they go on sale obviously.
Hmmm… so basically at worst it costs “three and a half full size games”.
But you can argue the “Side Missions” make up the 0.5 worth of game.
Interesting.
3 of the best hitman games ever I just wish it was offline.
I think going offline just gets more difficult with each sequel. During the Offline Period, I actually realized even the Silent Assassin indicator does not function offline (probably because it’s being used also as a debugger/error logger by IOI).
Well IOI Developed this trilogy with Online in mind since this game is essentially a live service with monthly content updates.
It’s gonna be a long while before any server shut downs happen, but for the sake of preservation I do feel like they will implement a form of contingency for HITMAN 3 to prevent the game ultimately being Online Only.
With HITMAN as a series taking a break for at-least a few years IO and their focus being 007 with it looking to be a whole trilogy with the first part being a “prologue” of sorts. I don’t see this game being online exclusive since it will be a more narrative focused title.
For perspective, CALL OF DUTY: GHOSTS is still online after all these years. You can still get into matches on Wii-U.
And that’s considering so many sequels and the existence of WARZONE and BLACK OPS: COLD WAR.
Call Of Duty as a brand is also ran by Activision Blizzard who are one of the few mega corporations in the gaming industry. They can financially back servers til the end of time and won’t lose income from it.
Unfortunately for IOI due to their independence they currently don’t have the financial backing to retain server to the scale that Activision can do with Call Of Duty.
Servers are very costly to manage and continue to support, a good example of a independent developer who had to shut down their dedicated server was Gun Media with Friday The 13th The Game. While the game was a financial success and had a very strong playerbase. Due to Copyright and Lawsuits it’s content cycle was cut short drastically. Content Support was canceled back in 2018 it took until November 2020 to shut down Dedicated Servers this was due to it just being costly. Fortunately for Gun they are making a new Licensed Horror Franchise game currently.
How this pertains to IOI though? While I don’t doubt IOI’s plans for HITMAN 3’s longevity especially with it’s always online element we don’t know what to expect outside its initial content cycle.
Content Cycles are important for a game to have some type of longevity this is especially true with Live Services such as Call Of Duty or in this case HITMAN.
New Content brings in players, and potential sale of their game, while satisfying the hardcore people such as us. This is the game at its prime and it’s where we will be at soon.
After all the Content it’s only a matter of time to see what will become of the always Online part of HITMAN. This will be apparent with player drop off and sales being at its lowest. The Steam release will reinvigorate the playerbase that is almost inevitable, but I don’t see Content Support going past two years.
The fate of HITMAN will be answered probably midway through the 2020’s when we have a more firm understanding of where IOI will be as a independent studio and how well their Bond Game will be.
Is the Hitman 2 Gold Access Pass really 100$? It’s been two years since that game (and that edition) first released. It definitely deserves to be 80$ at most for the Gold edition, or even 60$.
And what? The H1 GOTY Pass is 30$? Is this in USD? (If so, then Hitman 3 has a worse deal for Legacy content. the Hitman 2016 GOTY Legacy Pack (for H2) released for 20$ USD.)
Very good question… Actually if I was Marketing at IOI, I would be bringing up that question.
Because you can argue… “The Access Passes should be a way to entice people to get on board HITMAN 3 and the whole WoA concept… it should not become this 3-digit intimidating price figure…”
Considering how much games cost these days, it wouldn’t surprise me if at launch all this Legacy business amount to a bit over 100$. Say, 120$ is the highest I’d believe someone would want to fork over at launch for all that Hitman content they’ve been missing out on. (60$ for H3, 20$ for Season 1 and 40$ for H2 Gold).
But… over 200$ USD?? That’s insane. That’s Collector’s Edition levels of insane, but we’re talking about a digital game here. What. 
I’m very dissapointed in whoever organized the pricing for this game, whether that’s someone at IOI, WB, Enix, whoever… Here’s hoping they really do release a “Complete Series” type bundle next year, because this pricing is just way, way too high.
Not to mention a “Complete Edition” would help reduce the 125 SKU entry Profile system down to a much lower number and probably help reduce the Online Connection problems every time we get a HITMAN sequel.
You keep mentioning this 125 SKU thing… what’s that about? The items tied to our accounts or something?
Yes, there’s an interview somewhere where IOI state that when they launched HITMAN 3, it signified a purchase chain that possibly represented “as many as 125 SKU’s”
For example you buy HITMAN 3, Each map actually appears as one SKU (I think you can only see the full list on XBox Store). HITMAN 2 has an SKU for each level, and embedded in there are SKU’s for each Escalation pack and so on.
Supposedly if we take everything that can possibly be recognized by an H3/Access Pass purchase… the total count of items to tick off comes close to 125. However, it is possible that since IOI tackled that and I guess a lot of us are now online, that this is no longer a challenge.
At least until… HITMAN 4… huehuehue.
To put these SKUs into perspective: My Hitman 2 on Steam alone has 33 entries listed as “DLC” that I can individually download or uninstall (eaxch map is one entry, the GOTY upgrade, the special assignments, some suit packs…). Add various standard or gold or starter editions, complete packs, and the HIII stuff, and it sums up pretty fast.
(I’d post a screenshot, but the Steam UI is all graphics and no information as of the last update. It was a concise list some months ago, but now it shows 3 entries without scrolling, because there is a huge H2 image slapped in front of every entry -.- …thanks Steam)
Basically what we’re looking at is a “Buffet of Assassination” lol…
“Would sir care for a train mission to finish? It is only waaafer-thin.”
“I’m still trying to digest the Dubai Tower I had for breakfast…” 
“Waiter, There appears to be a bland consulate in my Marrakesh soup”
“Right so there is, would you like it replaced with our Night flavoured special?”
