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The Hitman Beta Is Open To All PlayStation Plus Members On March 4

Been dying to get an early hands-on with Hitman, but missed out on the first pre-order-gated beta test? If you're a PlayStation Plus member, you're in luck. IO Interactive's holding another test for all who subscribe to the premium service. Due to start on March 4, Hitman's second beta will feature the same playable content as the first one held for those that pre-ordered the game.

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Been dying to get an early hands-on with Hitman, but missed out on the first pre-order-gated beta test? If you’re a PlayStation Plus member, you’re in luck. IO Interactive’s holding another test for all who subscribe to the premium service. Due to start on March 4, Hitman‘s second beta will feature the same playable content as the first one held for those that pre-ordered the game.

Square Enix currently has no plans to hold a similar beta on Xbox One or PC, so if you don’t own a PlayStation 4, it looks like you’ll just have to wait for release day to once again play as Agent 47.

IO Interactive studio head Hanne Seifert has since stressed the importance of the studio being able to hold the first beta, saying that it provides invaluable data on how well the game’s servers can handle high traffic.

Our initial beta was an extremely helpful moment for our new HITMAN game, as it gave us great insight into how the server game mechanics function under pressure. A lot of those pressure points are currently being strengthened for release.

Now Sony have given us the opportunity to go even bigger to validate some of the initial things we saw. Therefore we are inviting everyone who is a PlayStation Plus member to try the same beta and you don’t have to pre-order the game. This will allow us to really stress test our server setup, which is a crucial element for us to get just right.

Eyebrows were raised when it was revealed that the new Hitman would be an episodic series rather than a full game on day one, but since then, previews and hands-on impressions have been extremely positive.

The question, really, is whether IO Interactive can maintain the same high level of quality gameplay of that seen in the early Paris stage shown off to the public.

Episode one of the game launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on March 11 – featuring the Prologue and aforementioned Paris missions. Subsequent episodes will be released over the rest of 2016.