A few keen Hitman afficianados who had already pre-ordered Square Enix’s next entry in the series, simply titled Hitman, got a worrying message from Sony earlier today advising that their pre-order had been cancelled by the publisher.
The message read as follows (courtesy Videogamer’s David Scammell on Twitter):
Thank you for pre-ordering Hitman. The publisher has notified us that the configuration of the product you pre-ordered has changed significantly. As a result we have withdrawn the current pre-order from PlayStation Store and will cancel all pre-orders. You will receive an email confirmation when your pre-order has been cancelled. A revised pre-order for Hitman will be available on the store soon.
The message is the same as another notice posted by Sony support on their official forums. Compounding speculation was the news, also from Videogamer, that the listing for Hitman on the European PlayStation Store had been pulled, albeit temporarily.
Square Enix addressed the situation this morning in a statement, assuring fans that Hitman‘s release date hasn’t changed and everything is fine.
“If your Hitman pre-order is cancelled, don’t panic,” reads the statement posted to the official Hitman Twitter account. “Release date is still March 11th. We’re adjusting a few things & will update in a few days. Sorry for any confusion.”
Fan concern stemmed largely from the fact that Hitman has seen a few release date slips since it was revealed at E3 last year. Square Enix had originally planned to ship the game with a smaller set of content on the disc with the intention of content drops later on. The game was delayed to March 11, 2016 after developer Io Interactive announced that they planned to up the amount of content in the final game and what fans could expect to see post-launch.
At this stage, it is not clear if the situation has changed again or if this unusual strategy for releasing content has required further internal considerations.
Hitman is coming to PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One.
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