007 First Light Wiki

007 First Light Development — IO Interactive, Glacier Engine & Project 007

007 First Light is the product of more than five years of work at IO Interactive, the Copenhagen-based studio best known for the modern Hitman trilogy. The project was announced in November 2020, transferred from EON Productions to Amazon MGM Studios mid-development, and released worldwide on 27 May 2026. This page is the production history, the engine background, and the launch reception in one place.

IO Interactive — the studio

  • Founded: September 1998, as a joint venture between the seven-person Reto-Moto development team and the Danish film studio Nordisk Film.
  • Headquarters: Copenhagen, Denmark, with additional studios in Malmö (opened January 2019), Barcelona (2021), Istanbul, and Brighton (both 2023).
  • Corporate history: Acquired by Eidos Interactive in March 2004 for roughly £23 million; folded into Square Enix Europe in 2009; spun back out via a management buyout in June 2017, regaining the rights to Hitman and Freedom Fighters in the process.
  • Catalogue: Hitman (2000–2021 World of Assassination trilogy), Kane & Lynch (2007, 2010), Freedom Fighters (2003), Mini Ninjas (2009), and now 007 First Light.

The Glacier engine

Every IO Interactive game since 2000 has run on Glacier, the studio's proprietary in-house engine. IOI built Glacier in the late 1990s because, at the time, no off-the-shelf engine handled the kind of dense crowd-AI sandbox simulation the original Hitman prototype required.

For 007 First Light, Glacier received its largest revision since the launch of Hitman in 2016. The notable additions:

  • Full path-traced lighting, including indirect global illumination, on PC and PS5 Pro.
  • Integration with NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, including Multi-Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction.
  • A new cinematic camera system for set-piece chases (Aston Martin Valhalla, helicopter pursuit, MI6 final boss).
  • A redesigned melee / parry stack built around tighter input windows than any previous IOI game.
  • Streaming infrastructure tuned for SSD-only platforms — the engine no longer supports mechanical hard drives.

Production timeline

  • 19 November 2020 — IO Interactive announces "Project 007" immediately after shipping Hitman 3. The original licensors are MGM and EON Productions.
  • 2021–2024 — Several years of pre-production and prototyping with limited public information. IO Interactive opens additional studios to scale up the team.
  • February 2025 — Amazon MGM Studios acquires full creative and production rights to the James Bond IP from EON and the Wilson / Broccoli producers. Supervisory duties for the game transfer to Amazon MGM.
  • 2 June 2025 — Official title revealed as 007 First Light. First cinematic trailer releases.
  • September 2025 — Gameplay reveal during Sony's State of Play.
  • 27 May 2026 — Worldwide launch on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Nintendo Switch 2 version delayed to Q3 2026.

This makes 007 First Light the first Bond video game released after EON Productions' exit from the franchise — a generational handover in custodianship that runs in parallel to the film franchise's own reboot.

Direction, writing, and music credits

  • Game directors: Hakan Abrak (also IO Interactive CEO) and Martin Emborg.
  • Lead writer: Michael Vogt.
  • Score and title song: The Flight (Joe Henson and Alexis Smith), the British composing duo known for Horizon Zero Dawn, Alien: Isolation, and Forza Horizon 5. The original title song is co-written by Lana Del Rey and David Arnold (the Brosnan and Craig-era Bond composer), performed by Del Rey.
  • James Bond likeness and voice: Irish actor Patrick Gibson, cast for the 26-year-old "first light" version of the character.

Launch reception

  • 1.5 million units sold in the first 24 hours, IO Interactive's strongest opening in the studio's history.
  • Metacritic 87/100 (PC, PS5) and 89/100 (Xbox Series X|S), making the game IOI's highest-rated title — even narrowly above the modern Hitman trilogy.
  • OpenCritic "Mighty" 90, with 98% of critics recommending the game; ranked in the top 2% of OpenCritic titles overall.
  • Critical consensus, summarised by OpenCritic's news desk: "007 First Light is the best Bond has been since GoldenEye."

For attributed critic quotes, see the Reviews page; for the buyer-focused verdict, see Is It Worth It?

Sources: Wikipedia, Variety (2020 announcement), IO Interactive corporate site, Game Developer feature interview, OpenCritic news desk. Last updated 29 May 2026.