‘007: First Light’ is a huge sales hit

Breaking news: The 007 series is popular.

Sarcasm aside, it sounds like longtime Hitman series developer IO Interactive has a bonafide hit on its hands. The company announced in a press release that the newly released 007: First Light video game sold 1.5 million units in its first 24 hours of availability, beating the record for the fastest-selling game IO has ever made. That’s not a small achievement, given the company’s previous success over the past decade with the excellent Hitman reboot trilogy.

Perhaps making this sales success even more impressive is the fact that First Light is not, in any way, tied into the James Bond film series. The protagonist is a new, younger version of Bond played by TV star Patrick Gibson, rather than by Daniel Craig or any other previous Bond actor, and aside from some cameos by the likes of Lenny Kravitz and Gemma Chan, most of the game’s central cast is made up of series newcomers who are primarily TV actors. That doesn’t make them any less talented or qualified to be in the game, of course, but it does make the game stand out from previous movie-star-studded 007 video game efforts like Everything or Nothing.

It also doesn’t hurt that the game, at least based on the first few hours that I’ve played, is really good. If you like James Bond, you should probably check it out. If these sales figures are to be believed, though, you probably already have.