Following up on a recent statement by the general manager of Amazon Games, Jeff Gatis, which indicated that a sequel to 007 First Light might not be self-published by developer IO Interactive, Amazon has now offered some more clarification on the matter. In a statement to VGC, the company said that it was too early to discuss a 007 First Light sequel just yet.
Amazon also praised its partnership with IO Interactive, noting that there are still more plans for the game that will be revealed in the “near future”.
“Amazon MGM holds the rights to any future James Bond video games, but it’s still too early to discuss future projects,” said a spokesperson for Amazon. “We have a great relationship with IO Interactive and are proud of what we’ve accomplished together on 007 First Light. Our partners at IO will reveal more about 007 First Light in the near future, and we’re looking forward to sharing what’s next.”
In his own statement from yesterday, Gattis had noted that Amazon “didn’t have the full rights to the First Light James Bond game,” and posited that any potential sequel would be “done by MGM and, theoretically, by Amazon Game Studios.”
“We did not [make 007 First Light],” he continued. “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.”
As for why Amazon would want to be more hands-on with its IP, Gattis spoke about wanting to expand the stories beyond just video games. Pointing to Tomb Raider as an example, he said that the tech giant also has larger ambitions for things like new TV shows and movies that could further expand on the audience brought in by game releases.
“We do see this continued integration of video and movies and video games, where that line is becoming much more blurry,” he explained. “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 just last week on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is also planned for release later in the summer. When asked about it, studio CEO Hakan Abrak said that the team already had it running on the console, and that it was making sure that the port didn’t suffer from poor performance.
“It’s running on the Switch 2,” he said. “We just want to make sure it’s as good as it can be. I don’t want to hear it wasn’t a good version. To be completely honest, we need a bit more time to get it where we want it to be. We said summer. It’s probably going to be late summer. But we’re going to get it out.”
In the meantime, take a look at our review of 007 First Light. And while you’re at it, also check out our thoughts on how it holds up against GoldenEye 007.
