Riddley

Releasing a product before its ready, especially for larger development houses, has pretty much been the standard modus operandi in the gaming industry for over the past decade. With big AAA titles and console-based ports, it's openly acknowledged that day-1 release builds may be incomplete, shoddy, bug-ridden disasters. Gamers shelling out 50+ bucks are essentially paying to beta test a retail release because of the pressure to churn out titles and maximize profit. QA kinda takes a backseat here. It's really kind of amusing, because no other industry can really get away with releasing broken products and still expect to be in business, but the gaming industry is a glaring exception. That being said, Firaxis is a very competent studio that know what they're doing. And lets be honest - 2K's level of concern regarding Xenonauts posing a significant competition threat probably hasn't reached the point where they're putting a ton of pressure on Firaxis to speed things up. Also take into consideration that X:EU seems to have been a sort of hush-hush project that has been in development for years, possibly before work was even started on 2K Marin's X-COM. The pressure here is on Goldhawk. Also I'd just like to say, as a veteran X-COMer and strategy gamer that has been playing PC games since the late 80's, I'm really excited for *both* games.

1993- 2004 - No doubt. Too many great games to list. It really was the golden age for PC gaming. A few of my favorites... Strategy / RTS / Tactical: X-COM (1993) *Best damn game of all time* Syndicate (1993) Master of Orion (1993) Master of Orion II (1996) Stars! (1996) Afterlife (1996) Dungeon Keeper (1997) Dungeon Keeper II (1999) Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate (1998) Warwind II: Human Onslaught (1999) Warlords III: Battlecry (2004) Warhammer: Dawn of War (2004) RPG: Bloodnet (1993) Shadowcaster (1993) Fallout (1997) Fallout 2 (1998) Planescape: Torment (1999) Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (2001) * Seriously, could Black Isle Studios do no wrong in this era? Wonderful and timeless games. FPS/RPG/First Person Sneaker: Thief: The Dark Project (1998) Thief II: The Metal Age (2000) Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (2004)

One of the problems Xenonauts might run into is that proposed retail 30-40$ price tag, especially if the new release of X:EU is bundled/accompanied with 2K Marin's "XCOM" (don't even get me started on everything wrong with 2K Marin and their contrived and generic FPS "reboot" of a legendary franchise) within the 50-60$ range. One of the advantages for buying indie games, especially over digital distribution such as steam, is that they're usually significantly cheaper than AAA titles and often offer more bang for the buck when done right. 30 bucks might be a steep for many, especially if 2K/Firaxis decide to release the title at a price like 39.99. Also take into consideration that Firaxis is a known and established company that has a reputation for being very faithful to IPs (not to mention all of the marketing funds they have at their disposal). They're making use of the actual license - not a clone, spin-off, or 'spiritual successor', such as games like UFO: Extraterrestrials (another spiritual successor that in many respects just ripped off X-COM with little innovation). I personally feel Xenonauts has a lot going for it in terms of setting and direction even if it is lumped into the category of 'XCOM clone'. But, depending on how X:EU turns out, there may be quite a few folks (purists or people new to strategy games) who decide "Hmm...why bother shelling out the cash for a spiritual successor to XCOM, when there's an actual XCOM title being released?" Retail price and more importantly the timing of the release are going to be pretty important factors here. Oh, and of course the more coverage Xenonauts can get from big game casters like TB and the Yogscast, the better. The popularity of these guys ensures that even if a game is rubbish, its going to get a lot of attention. Just look at what happened when the Yogscast livestreamed X-COM earlier this week - a lot of interest was generated and sales for the X-COM bundle increased considerably. Even todays Steam deal has the X-Com bundle on sale for the front page. This kind of coverage can't be underestimated, and it truly helps offset the fact that indie developers don't have millions of dollars to toss around for advertising like the big game studios.

Apologies if this has been covered, but are there any plans to implement some proper heavy weapons (besides the RL)? For example, the coldwar Shipunov GShG-7.62 minigun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GShG-7.62_machine_gun There was always a special place in my heart for heavy weapon troops back in XCOM. Although the game never had classes, I always built squads based on roles - heavy weapons, sniper, CQC (close quarter combat), medic, etc,. The heavy and auto-cannon had nice ammo variety (which essentially functioned as weapon mod kits), but they quickly became obsolete by the time plasma or even laser weapons rolled around. This was largely due to the linearity of the tech tree with respect to alien weaponry power creep. After a certain point, all the soldiers essentially became generic heavy plasma / blaster bomb troops with no need for specialty weapons. I really hope the Xenonauts weaponry and tech options are not so limited.

“Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" (They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier)