007 First Light‘s success may have brought in renewed interest for the James Bond IP. However, it looks like if a sequel is made, IO Interactive won’t be self-publishing it. In an interview with Polygon, general manager of Amazon’s gaming division, Jeff Gattis, spoke about future plans for the franchise.
The decision to publish potential sequels itself comes down to the fact that IO Interactive had signed the adaptation deal with MGM before Amazon acquired the film producer. Following the acquisition, the tech giant also has a stake in the future success of James Bond as a franchise.
While Amazon “didn’t have the full rights to the First Light James Bond game,” Gattis noted that future games and potential sequels will be “done by MGM and, theoretically, by Amazon Game Studios.”
“We did not [make 007 First Light],” said Gattis. “We do have a stake in it because we now own the IP, but that IP acquisition happened after the First Light IO deal was already done.”
Amazon taking ownership of the IPs it owns more seriously comes down to the fact that much of the company’s future plans involve “continued integration of video and movies and video games.” These plans largely seem to revolve around making more adaptations of classic IPs, with Gattis specifically pointing to Tomb Raider as one of the examples.
“We do see this continued integration of video and movies and video games, where that line is becoming much more blurry,” he said. “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.”
“This is where we’ve kind of made some bets on first-party content.”
007 First Light was released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S just last week, and has started seeing almost overnight success. IO Interactive confirmed through a social media post that, in its first 24 hours, the game had sold 1.5 million copies. It is worth noting that the title was released on the cusp of a weekend, so the sales figures have likely shot up quite a bit higher since then.
This success of the title should come as no surprise since, even in our own review, we gave the title a score of 9 out of 10 thanks to its great take on a young James Bond, excellent level design, and high production values. Our only complaints were the presence of some annoying quick-time events, and the enemy AI being quite dull at times.
We weren’t the only publication to praise 007 First Light either; IO Interactive has celebrated the widespread positive acclaim seen by the title through the release of an accolades trailer.
007 First Light serves as an origin story for James Bond, starting off with his recruitment into MI6 and his subsequent training. The plot itself is a globe-trotting one, taking players to a variety of locations, from a gorgeous luxury resort in Vietnam to a ship graveyard in Mauritania, and even a giant castle repurposed into a high-class hotel in Slovakia.
A Nintendo Switch 2 version of 007 First Light is planned for release later in the summer.
