XCom Shooter Delayed to 2013

[Andy Chalk]

XCom Shooter Delayed to 2013

2K's new XCom shooter has been pushed back into 2013.

This is starting to get a bit weird. First, 2K Games announces a reboot of the famed X-Com franchise, except not with a strategy game but with a reveals [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99964-New-X-Com-Shooter-Coming-From-BioShock-2-Studio] that Firaxis is in fact working on an X-Com remake of its own entitled XCom: Enemy Unknown, an actual do-over of the original strategy game.

No release date for that game has been set, but today it's come to light that the planned XCom shooter has been significantly delayed and instead of coming out in March of this year as expected, it will now launch sometime in 2013. Reasons for the delay weren't given but according to IGN [http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/121/1216433p1.html], 2K now wants to relaunch the franchise with Enemy Unknown rather than the shooter, which at this point is still "subtitle unknown."

What led to the change of heart? It's possible that all the wounded howling led 2K to decide that rebooting the franchise as a shooter was a big mistake, but I'm not convinced that giving the internet what it wants is a good idea, particularly when you're talking about bringing a 20-year-old strategy game to consoles. And if that is the case - if 2K has decided that strategy is the future - then does a shooter really fit into that plan? I wouldn't be at all surprised if further XCom-related shenanigans are in the offing.


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[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Smart move. It seems like they may have actually listened to the fans. The vast majority of your sales would be from X-COM fans, and that shooter had been drilled by fans left and right.

 

[thiosk]

I must post in all xcom related threads that come out at the same time. Also, I must write "ain't" in every post today at least once.

Three cheers for wounded weeping! Its true, I wept like a tiny little child whose parents took her candy away, and I threw a temper tantrum and threatened to dump everyones elerium-115 in the toilet.

In my opinion, the FPS shooter looked lackluster, and didn't seem like a hit. Seemed like a snoozer. Might as well not waste a potentially hot property (there ain't nothing out there like X-Com) so hopefully a few concepts go back to the drawing board and we get a much improved FPS companion to the strategy titan.

 

[LavaLampBamboo]

Okay, cards on the table: I've never played the original X-COM game. That said, I thought the new X-COM shooter looked really exciting. There was still an element of strategy and micromanagement, and I think it provided a nice 60's backstory to the universe.

I'm also quite interested in the new Enemy Unknown game. I think it looks like it could be a lot of fun. However, I think it would have been nice to see both games existing side by side in a shared universe.

Personally I hope that X-COM Shooter is not cancelled, but who knows?

 

[fix-the-spade]

A sudden delay of over a year?

That sounds like whatever they had wasn't ready to go on a disc. Outside of Valve and Acti-Blizzard there aren't any developers (or publishers) that can afford to just sit on a game for a whole year and twiddle their thumbs. If the delay's this big then obviously X-Com fps was never going to hit a release this year, or it would have been crap if it did.

Although a remake of X-Com 1 is good, time to get a whole new generation living in fear of the Chryssalids...

 

[RA92]

Good. As if niche markets/franchises need to lose anything more.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

How about, and this is just a thought, they look at Xenonaughts, Apocalypse, and all the other reference points on the background and actually....you know...look at the history of the game.

Then decide whether it needs "rebooting in a gritty shootery way", or maybe - what was the quote -

"Turn-based strategy games were no longer the hottest thing on planet Earth," Hartmann said. "But this is not just a commercial thing - strategy games are just not contemporary."

Not contemporary, are we? [http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/2/22/Heavy_specialcompleted11.wav]

"That's what we are trying to do. To renew Xcom but in line with what this generation of gamers want," he said. "The team behind it is asking themselves every day: 'Is it true to the values of the franchise?' It's not a case of cashing in on the name. We just need to renew it because times are changing."

That burning you feel? It is shame [http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/7/7a/Heavy_domination15.wav]

 

[teqrevisited]

Maybe they're thinking of actually putting recognizable elements into it instead of having you shoot random geometric shapes. I'm not completely against the idea but they could at least have put effort into connecting it with more than just the name.

 

[octafish]

I'm calling this a win for common sense. They should look at rebooting Interceptor before they make X-Com a shooter.

 

[Mike Richards]

I don't really care what they call the shooter as long as it still comes out at some point. In all it's probably a good thing it's getting renamed, so we can stop focusing on the expectations the franchise brings to the table and start focusing on the fact that it looks like it could actually be pretty cool as what it is.

 

[CD-R]

Good hopefully now it will at least look like X com. I'm not opposed to making an X-Com fps. I'd love to be able to zip around in flying power armor, level entire buildings with blaster bombs, and kick sectoids off rooftops. What I don't want to do is play Mass Effect 1950's edition. Which is exactly what the X-Com fps was shaping up to be. Seriously the enemies looked just like the husks from Mass Effect and the sqaud abilities were basically a carbon copy of the biotic abilities.

 

[vrbtny]

Dammit, I was actually really looking forward to this. As someone who has never played the original X-com, i'm not that fussed about the franchise (Although I hear it is really good, so fans please don't burn me)

The game itself sounds like a First-Person Mass Effect, but set on Earth in the fifties.... Sounds awesome, right? Well to me it does, we won't be left with Bioware's stodgy animations, cruddy PC ports and lackluster weapons meshes and textures(Half the guns in Mass Effect 1 are the same guns, just with a different colour texture)

Oh well, at least this way the game might get some polish and a decent PC port. Here's hoping.

 

[Worgen]

All I know is that I'm looking forward to the strategy reboot, the screens I've seen for it make me hopeful but I need some gameplay to really get hyped for it. The shooter annoyed me since it was called xcom but had nothing to do with xcom so I'm not planning on shedding any tears for it being delayed.

 

[Hyakunin Isshu]

Great news! Now if only it could be cancelled too!

It was such a boring, ugly, very linear game, which could only rip-off Mass Effect for all it's ideas. The FPS game wanted nothing to do with X-COM.

Here's a video showing how bad the game looked:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=PL05D7E3C3D824BC91&v=-SH19sgisEk#t=1451s

 

[tmande2nd]

Now if only EA could do the same maybe thing will be better.

 

[Treblaine]

I'm genuinely interested in XCOM: Subtitle Unknown but it doesn't deserve the XCOM name, just rename it for goodness sake and stop trying to exploit the reputation of a classic strategy games series that it is simply too far removed from. The fans whom that name means something, will not appreciate this.

Call it... I don't know... G-MEN: Subtitle Unknown, or something like that.

2K made a god awful terrible decision trying to use the XCOM name in what is essentially a completely new IP. What is wrong with this industry where they have an essentially brand new idea but they HAVE to hold up the pretence of it being a remake. This obsession qith sequels and remakes is dangerous, a serious lack of great new IPs.

Even the new IPs like Red Dead Redemption you can see them arguing to shareholders "no no NO! it's not new, it's very safe. It's Red Dead Revolver sequel with GTA4 template. Don't worry, there isn't too much innovation".

 

[Bishop99999999]

Well, I guess I fall squarely in the minority of posters here, but I couldn't care less about "XCOM-ifying" it. I was loving the idea of 60s G-men fighting abstract space horrors in suburban America. The original footage of the game was wonderfully sinister, and I get the impression that it sold a bit of its soul to appease the XCOM fanatics. Shame that four little letters could cause so much trouble...