More James Bond games are all but guaranteed after the early success of 007 First Light. Developer IO Interactive announced last week that its young Bond game sold 1.5 million copies in its first 24 hours on the market, reaching that milestone faster than any of the studio’s Hitman games.
While IO Interactive self-published that game, the head of Amazon Games says that won’t be the case going forward. In an interview with Polygon, Jeff Gattis, GM of gaming at Amazon, says that while the tech giant “didn’t have the full rights to this First Light James Bond game,” sequels will be “done by MGM and, theoretically, by Amazon Game Studios.”
“We did not [make First Light]. We do have a stake in it because we now own the IP,” Gattis explains, “but that IP acquisition happened after the First Light IO deal was already done.”
That’s all part of Amazon’s strategy to fully capitalize on the intellectual property it owns and the broad reach of the company’s entertainment businesses.
“We do see this continued integration of video and movies and video games, where that line is becoming much more blurry,” Gattis says. “We think that’s a real opportunity for us to create IP that extends — or kind of expands upon — TV shows and movies. So there’ll be a Tomb Raider TV show on Prime Video that’ll go alongside the games. There’s a lot of things we have in the works on new games that’ll relate to Prime Video IP.”
Added Gattis, “This is where we’ve kind of made some bets on first-party content.”
Amazon Games certainly hasn’t cracked the gaming business with projects it’s built from the ground up. Many of Amazon’s games, from Crucible to King of Meat, have failed to find a broad audience. It may have better luck with the massive legacy properties it owns or publishes, like James Bond and Tomb Raider. If it can keep IO Interactive involved, Amazon might finally find a foothold in the AAA games space.
The ending of 007 First Light certainly leaves ample room for a sequel. Whether the young James Bond game will ultimately do massive numbers that please Jeff Bezos is another matter altogether, but Amazon seems willing to invest first and worry about making money on its big entertainment bets later.
007 First Light reviews agree it’s the best Bond game since GoldenEye
But it’s maybe not as good a Hitman game as Hitman
