After many months of dancing around the topic it would appear we finally got an answer on how exactly the latest Hitman game will be released.

In a recent press announcement Square Enix confirmed that Hitman will be a truly episodic AAA game with a major live component. The beta will start this February 12th for the PS4 and a few days later, on February 19th for PC.

As for why they chose the episodic format for Hitman, head of studio Hannes Seifert had this to say:

"We decided to take the full leap and publish HITMAN as a truly episodic game experience. Part of that decision is for that little bit of extra time to ensure every location we release is at the quality level fitting for a HITMAN game.

But the main driving reason is that this will allow us to create a living game that will expand and evolve over time and establish a foundation for the future – this is the first game in a storyline which will continue and expand with future Hitman games.”

March 11th will mark the release of the first few pieces of content, the Prologue mission & Paris location which will then be followed by a location set in Italy this April and then Morocco in May. From then on you can expect regular monthly content updates which will include three additional locations set in Thailand, the US and the finale set in Japan later in 2016.

Instead of simply having a drought in content between each monthly release there are going to be weekly live events planned in between the updates which will task you to perform specific contract hits on various targets.

If you want to essentially demo the new Hitman game you can buy the Intro Pack which contains the Prologue and Paris location for $15 with each subsequent location being an extra $10. Alternatively you can buy the entire game at its standard $60 price tag which includes all of the updates and any potential bonus content.

While I'm still not sure whether the episodic format is really good for AAA games (just look at Half Life) I do appreciate the fact that they are allowing people to buy only a couple of levels at a reasonable price as an extended demo/teaser.