IO Interactive's first non-Hitman game in years is a smash success, as 007 First Light has officially sold 1.5 million copies in its first 24hrs after launch, the studio announced in a post on X (formerly Twitter) today, one day after its full release and two days after its early access release for deluxe edition owners.
The last time IO Interactive developed and shipped a game that wasn't centered around Agent 47 was the last release in its long-dormant Kane & Lynch series, which saw its last release hit store shelves all the way back in 2010. Ever since, the studio has become known as 'the Hitman developer,' so its surely exciting for the team to have its first non-Hitman project find commercial success immediately.
Sure, it was the video game developer to franchise equivalent of putting peanut butter with chocolate to get IO Interactive to make a James Bond game, but that never meant it would be a shoe-in to sell over a million copies, or that it would become one of the more highly-rated games of the year and a potential GOTY candidate for 2026.
It'll be interesting to see where the game lands by the end of the year in terms of the critical conversation, even with the fact that everyone expects Grand Theft Auto VI to dominate the conversation once it arrives in November. Sure, we all expect GTA VI to be an incredible game, but that doesn't mean the likes of 007 First Light, Forza Horizon 6, Resident Evil Requiem, and other games not even out yet don't stand a chance at snatching the GOTY prize from GTA. Yacht Club Games' latest, Mina the Hollower, for example, is currently the highest-rated game of the year on Metacritic so far.
That's all to say it's just nice to see games like 007 First Light find critical and commercial success to make the conversation around GOTY 2026 a little more interesting, even if it does go the way we all expect it to in December. For Wccftech's part, Alessio Palumbo gave IOI's Bond adventure an 8.5/10, praising it as "one of the greatest James Bond games ever made."
"IO Interactive crafted a great third-person adventure game that mixes linear and open-ended levels and delivers an Oscar-worthy narrative to support it all. There's still room for improvement in the already-confirmed sequel (the credits close with 'James Bond will return'), but Bond's origin story is already a must for genre fans."
With this initial commercial and critical success, the question now becomes whether IO Interactive has the chance to do it again. In the past, the rule for any James Bond project, film or otherwise, was that the actor playing Bond in the films was the only one allowed to play Bond in any other projects. Now, however, with Amazon MGM Studios as the new heralds of the Bond IP, they could break that rule for the first time in the franchises history, allowing IO's Bond, Patrick Gibson, to continue in the role for sequel games, while a different Bond takes over for the new films.
Or, of course, this could've been Gibson's soft-launch as the next Bond for the foreseeable future. Either way, whatever allows IO Interactive to continue making games within this world will be a win for fans of 007 First Light.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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