Not to push against the tide, or anything, but this might actually be a good thing.
I'm not exactly a dedicated Hitman fan, mind you. But it reads rather like a note of confidence; Square-Enix thinks that if you play one episode, you'll be hooked enough to want to play more.
(Or they may be thinking that the dedicated fanbase will simply go for the $60 option as the whole pre-order nonsense seems to have trained so many of us to do. Still, at least there's an option.)
Honestly, it appears a slightly odd move from a financial standpoint. The incentive would appear to favor waiting until the whole thing is finished and word was out before scooping it up in the inevitable marked-down final or "game of the year" edition. But that's their problem. From where I stand, this is arguably a better offer than many of the games that want you to pay $50-$60 and an additional fee for in-game content or a "subscription pass". If they were charging $60 per episode, I'd understand getting angry. But as it stands, the consumer is being offered a fair price to try the thing out, and if it's awful, it's that much less money lost to find out. Sounds good to me.
Of course, it may lead to a drawn out and unpredictable release schedule; it may be cancelled before it's finished and leave the people who bought it complete in the lurch; it may underperform and have people and resources withdrawn, leading to a game that starts strong and peters out badly by the end. But we'll be given every opportunity to see if any of those things actually happens; why jump to conclusions?
