Troubled XCOM Shooter's Website Disappears

Karloff

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Troubled XCOM Shooter's Website Disappears



No website, no videos ... something's up, but what?

Not that long ago the only news about 2K Marin's troubled XCOM shooter was that main site [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121929-XCom-Shooter-is-Alive-and-Kicking], though - if you click on the 'official site' banner - it redirects to its much more popular sibling, XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

When the XCOM reboot was originally announced, fans were upset that the tactical gameplay they'd come to love had been replaced by yet another shooter style game. The turn-based tactical remake that resulted from this outcry, XCOM: Enemy Unknown did very well indeed [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121937-Sectoids-and-Bandits-Make-Take-Two-Financials-Rosy], and it seems unlikely - no matter how good the shooter may have been - that it would match Enemy Unknown's rapturous reception. If this sudden absence from the internet indicates that the game's been cancelled, it doesn't take much deductive reasoning to work out why that might have happened.

Or, of course, it could be a rebranding. The Bureau [http://gematsu.com/2013/03/rumor-xcom-shooter-rebranded-the-bureau] has been floated as a potential substitute name. If so, this seems a clunky way of handling a rebranding; you'd think a press release, and a redirect to the new site, would be the way to go. Yet none of the four Bureau domains registered by 2K go anywhere interesting, and there's been no word yet from the developer as to what might have happened to its XCOM shooter.

Source: Game Informer [http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/04/13/the-xcom-shooter-disappears-from-the-internet.aspx]


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Combustion Kevin

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looks like someone thought releasing this might be emberassing and pulled the plug, can't blame em though, the footage didn't really show anything stand out to me.

still though, that's about two years of work slipping into the void, kind of a shame.
 

Wuvlycuddles

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Won't be surprised if it is cancelled, that other 90's strategy game turned fps reboot Syndicate bombed despite being a pretty good game. And with the success of that other X-Com game I think its pretty clear people aren't interested in FPS re-imaginings of classic Strategy games and just want their classic strategy games to become modern strategy games, who would have thought?
 

Ed130 The Vanguard

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Sep 10, 2008
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Wuvlycuddles said:
Won't be surprised if it is cancelled, that other 90's strategy game turned fps reboot Syndicate bombed despite being a pretty good game. And with the success of that other X-Com game I think its pretty clear people aren't interested in FPS re-imaginings of classic Strategy games and just want their classic strategy games to become modern strategy games, who would have thought?
Not EA apparently.

I hope its just a re-branding, there were some good ideas there (especially the literal killer geometry) but slapping the Xcom name on it was begging for stuff like this happening.

 

Tohuvabohu

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Mar 24, 2011
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This leads me to think that they're readying up for a rebranding. That is, if they didn't cancel it entirely.

For a game like this, it should've been announced and billed as a new IP entirely and this headache would've never happened in the first place. Shame too, because they put together a decent tech demo for a game that could've been alright. Sure, it was another shooter in the sea of shooters of this generation, but I didn't think what they had put together looked bad. Plus I thought the time setting plus aesthetic of it could've done some interesting things.
 

PatrickXD

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From what I understand XCOM: Enemy Unknown isn't the result of an outcry of gamers dissatisfied with XCOM. It took more than two years to make; development on Enemy Unknown started many years before the announcement of XCOM.
It's upsetting to see what could have been a good game disappear without any public announcement, but maybe it's for the best. I would certainly rather see more XCOM games in the same vein as Enemy Unknown be released than have a mediocre shooter soil the XCOM brand such that a publisher would choose not to back any more XCOM games.
 

MDSnowman

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Wow, it's felt like years since I heard from this game. I thought it had just vanished before now.
 

Ov3rdose

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The 2K( http://www.2kgames.com/#/games/xcom ) games site for XCOM is still up. Maybe check next time before you post
 

Nimzabaat

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Ov3rdose said:
The 2K( http://www.2kgames.com/#/games/xcom ) games site for XCOM is still up. Maybe check next time before you post
If you click on the link to the official site it's... XCOM Enemy Unknown. They even mentioned that in the post.
 

Squilookle

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Had to do it...


Now you look at me and tell me that image doesn't suit this situation perfectly. And I do mean perfectly
 

Quaxar

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It knew too much, it had to go...

Maybe that will teach other games like it to snoop around other game genres!
 

Parakeettheprawn

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WHY! First Syndicate (my FPS GOTY 2012), now this...

That's it, it's time to go on a warpath with the fanboys. Someone get me my plasma cutter! It's time to end this s**t.

In all serious though: YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! They had a great tech demo and were looking to hybrid management sim with Bioshock, XCOM, and Mass Effect with a great art style and genuinely unique enemies... It essentially is XCOM, just you're in the trenches with your squadmates, which always sounded more fun to me tbh. It was actually looking to be a promising, far more in-depth than standard FPS.
 

Parakeettheprawn

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Quaxar said:
It knew too much, it had to go...

Maybe that will teach other games like it to snoop around other game genres!
...I already heard this argument before, and really, anything else essentially already is EU or is EU without the levels (if you want to just make it a JRPG). Sandbox would never work. An Isometric shooter is no better than FPS, in fact there are more of those than there are FPS games. RTS isn't much different than standard gameplay. It's already an RPG/Turn-based strategy hybrid with management sim elements, the only thing changed in the FPS version was that instead of pure turn-based it was live action with AP based moves for your squadmates that you could order. Everything else was the same.
 

LordLundar

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It seems to me like the publisher saw the shitstorm that A:CM dug up, realized they might be compared to it (where even a favourable comparison isn't great for the image) and panicked.
 

flarty

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Tohuvabohu said:
I thought the time setting plus aesthetic of it could've done some interesting things.
I thought that as well, then i saw the aliens =/
 

Parakeettheprawn

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flarty said:
Tohuvabohu said:
I thought the time setting plus aesthetic of it could've done some interesting things.
I thought that as well, then i saw the aliens =/
What? The aliens looked crazy fantastic. Giant floating monoliths and weird sphere like enemies? "Finally something to fight that doesn't run by standard conventions" was my first thought.
 

Doom972

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Either the game will get rebranded, or what was already made will be used in another game(s). Either way, we didn't lose much.
I hope that the industry would learn from this, but I doubt it.
 

mattaui

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I didn't hold out much promise for this game when all they had at PAX 2011 was this admittedly creepy model of a guy sitting in a chair being shot through with bolts of energy.

I can definitely appreciate an old school 1950s game about extraterrestrials and the paranormal, but that's just not in the mold of XCOM.

The new Enemy Unknown, while certainly streamlining things, was phenomenally on target with the overall look and feel of the game.
 

Parakeettheprawn

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DVS BSTrD said:
If by standard convention you mean being able to look at the screen for more than a minute without getting* a migraine.
Somehow I managed to look at it for longer than a minute without any migraines.