New Hitman game will have just seven missions at launch

The Hitman series has been running since 2000, giving millions of players around the world the chance to garrote folks a playground full of digital death.

And it would be fair to say that people are a bit confused about this one.

Mainly that’s because IO Interactive has said that it’s basically going to be released as a bit of a work in progress.

Players will buy the base game for a set price, which will include a smaller amount of content but it will be supplemented with regular updates and new features in the months and years to follow.

It’s an unusual idea, especially when you consider it’s been three full years since their last game - couldn’t they finish an entire project in that time?

But the notion of buying into an evolving ecosystem interesting, especially because it will give the developers time to listen to player feedback and deliver new elements, which people actually want.

Now we’re getting an idea of what to expect on the games initial launch - which will take place before the end of the year and only on digital channels.

A listing on Amazon.com has some new info on the game, including: "An Expanding World of Assassination: Travel around the globe in the seven all new missions of Season One."

Take note, this is for the physical release of the game which will happen some time in 2016.

So it seems that the initial release of Hitman will feature seven levels.

That doesn’t sound like a lot of content at launch for the price of a full game but you really are buying into something bigger than that.

You won’t have to fork out more for DLC, with regular updates bringing new levels, challenges, weapons and more.

IO Interactive also plans to have special one off events - missions which only appear once and if you fail them they’re gone forever.

They’re planning to build a thriving online community around the Contracts element of the game, building off the main single player portion.

It all sounds like there’s a lot of potential here, but the developers and publishers will have to do some work to convince players they’re not being ripped off by the initial purchase.

They’ll want to have a more concrete idea of what is planned after Season One before paying for a relatively small amount of content.

Let’s hope the information gets out there soon about the future of Hitman.

Hitman will release on PS4, Xbox One and PC from December 8, 2015 on digital download only.