007 First Light, James Bond’s freshly released spying sojourn to various exotic and dangerous locales, is a thoroughly enjoyable action romp. Naturally, the fact that was my verdict when reviewing it means I’m keen to see developers IO Interactive get a crack at doing a sequel, possibly after returning to their bread and butter with Hitman for a bit. However, whether they will or not looks to have been left a bit up in the air for now, with an Amazon Game Studios exec having confirmed that IO won’t be self-publishing any Bond follow-ups.
On the surface, the reason for that publishing switch is simply down to the ownership situation of Bond’s rights having changed since IO signed their deal to develop First Light and announced the game. Amazon MGM Studios only acquired creative control of the spy from Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson in 2025, meaning by the time they got that power, First Light was well on its way to heading out into the field.
As such, Gattis said Amazon “didn’t have the full rights to this First Light James Bond game,” but that sequels will be “done by MGM and, theoretically, by Amazon Game Studios”. What that could mean in terms of IO continuing as developers on follow-ups that anyone who’s played First Light can tell the studio are keen to make was seemingly left unsaid by Gattis, though he certainly hasn’t ruled out the Hitman developers staying on.
I’ve reached out to Amazon Game Studios for comment.
Gattis did make clear that Amazon are keen on doing plenty with the established series they own. He yacked about a “continued integration of video and movies and video games, where that line is becoming much more blurry”, and explained that the corp “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,” he said. “There’s a lot of things we have in the works on new games that’ll relate to Prime Video IP.”
My guess would be that, unless IO aren’t willing to budge on being the publisher or Amazon are desperate to be overly hands-on in terms of the creative direction of any sequels, the Hitman makers will stick around on Bond for the foreseeable. From a purely game-centric perspective, it’d make no sense to throw away the Bond game momentum First Light’s spooled up. However, this is the games industry and stranger things have happened because suits couldn’t agree.
Maybe if they’re all given matching watches…
