Sadly, it doesn’t look like one is in the works just yet. That’s as per Firaxis’ Jake Solomon, who was the director of both XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, not to mention the recently-released Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Speaking in a recent interview with VGC, Solomon said that he is not currently working on an XCOM 3, with his full attention on Marvel’s Midnight Suns and its post-launch support for now.

“I personally have no information on that right now and I say that because, truly, yesterday I was working on Morbius’ abbey outfits and recolours, so I am not working on it,” he said. “I don’t have any secret agenda, I don’t know anything about XCOM at this point.”

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Firaxis doesn’t intend to return to the strategy series. In fact, as recently as a few months ago, Solomon said that even though the studio was busy with Marvel’s Midnight Suns, XCOM “definitely” wasn’t dead.

How long we’ll have to wait before Firaxis is ready to come out with another new XCOM game remains to be seen, but if nothing else, fans can at least take solace in the fact that sooner or later, the series will be back.

Solomon, who directed XCOM 1 and 2, revealed to VGC, “As long as I live, as long as Firaxis lives, XCOM is…I won’t even say sleeping. I will say XCOM is definitely not dead.”

The last title in the series was XCOM: Chimera Squad, a turn-based tactical spin-off. Suffice to say that it didn’t reach the same levels of critical and commercial success that the original did. As for XCOM 2, it’s still being played – SteamDB notes a 24-hour peak of 4,346 concurrent players and mods are still being released. It’s currently available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is out on October 7th for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and PC. The Nintendo Switch version is slated for later. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

With XCOM: Chimera Squad last year and the constant support that Civilization 6 is receiving, Firaxis Games have been pretty busy- but when’s their next big game coming out? Well, it seems like it’s not going to be too long before we at least hear about one of them (or maybe even more than one).

During Take-Two Interactive’s recently quarterly earnings call (via VGC), CEO Strauss Zelnick said that the developer is currently working on multiple “exciting” projects, and that they’re going to be announced later in the year.

“We expect this growth to continue as the studio has several exciting projects in development that will be revealed this year,” he said.

Civilization 6 launched all the way back in 2016, and though we recently did get Chimera Squad, the last mainline numbered XCOM game also hasn’t launched in a while, so it’s likely that at least one of those sequels is in development right now. Of course, both of them could be, but even one of those announcements would be great for series fans.

Stay tuned, and we’ll keep you updated on any new details that come our way.

In this feature, we’ll be taking a look at ten ways games have done that over the years- a few examples that are specific to certain games, and some more general ones that have been made use of in several titles throughout history.

PORTAL 2’S FINAL MOMENTS

Portal 2 is a game that wants you to be precise, and clever. Without those basic requirements, the core gameplay loop of Portal 2 would fall apart. But it makes an exception even to that. During the game’s final boss fight, there comes a moment – without going into spoilers – that requires you to place that final, crucial portal. But Portal 2 actually makes it so that no matter which fire button you press, you’ll always shoot out the correct coloured portal, the one the game needs you to shoot out. It’s a simple thing, but very clever, because in the absence of this trick, you might end up shooting a very – let’s call it weird portal – and the entire final fight would be ruined.

You know how Microsoft has been going around acquiring a whole bunch of major developers to try and bolster their first party, which has fallen immensely behind relative to Sony and Nintendo? Well, it looks like Sony may be gearing up to do something to regain their lead—if this newest rumor, which should be taken with a huge grain of salt, is to be believed.

Joel Kulina, head of technology and media trading at Wedbush Securities, has reported (via MarketWatch) that Sony is currently in high level discussions to acquire Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar and 2K Games—the publishers of titles such as Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, Civilization, XCOM, and NBA 2K. The deal is apparently going to be “mostly cash”, which sounds a bit absurd, because attempting to purchase a company valued as high as Take-Two in mostly cash would deplete a massive portion of Sony Corp.’s (not PlayStation, all of Sony’s) cash reserves in one fell swoop—but maybe Sony feels that’s worth the risk of having Grand Theft Auto be exclusive to their machine.

To me, this sounds extremely unlikely, especially given Take-Two’s previous assertions that they want to be everywhere where there are customers—which going exclusive to just one console would go against. Unless Sony were to allow Take-Two games on all platforms, in which case… what’s the point? Revenue, I assume.

For now, this is a rumor, and treat it as such. But hey, things are getting interesting regardless.

While Rockstar rightly gets all the fame and glory for their enormous Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, their sister label, 2K Games, which also falls under the larger Take-Two label, also does its own fair share of work. While the publisher can boast about several big titles in its arsenal, in a new interview, studio president David Ismailer relayed hopes to expand on that portfolio.

Boasting that the ideas they have outstrip their resources to actually execute those ideas, Ismailer said in an interview with GamesIndustry,“We’re looking to expand and grow our portfolio, whether it’s internally developing more products, or it’s adding more long-term partnerships to our 2K product line. We’re looking for quality products to deliver to consumers with long engagement.” He would later also specify that Civilization and XCOM developers Firaxis are looking to create another IP as one example, which you can read more about here.

Ismailer’s words to seem to nod towards that ever popular Games-as-a-Service model that we’ve seen growing in the games industry like a slow growing tumour for awhile, but we’ll have to see where they go with it in the future. Let us know in the comments.

If you’ve been wondering about XCOM creator Julian Gollop’s next big game, based on the 1985 classic, namely Chaos Reborn, then know that it will be on Kickstarter soon. This was announced by Gollop on Prefundia earlier today.

“We are now working on some great looking graphics and animation for creatures and environments. Campaign backers will have exclusive access to early prototypes and regular updates as the game develops.”

Originally announced in 2012, Chaos Reborn is a turn based strategy RPG which sees 2 to 6 players in multiplayer fighting in arena battles. There will be a single player campaign as well where you’ll be able to level up, customize your character, collect loot and make your way through the so-called Realm of Chaos.

Chaos Reborn is currently set to release in 2014 for the PC, Mac OS X and Linux. Stay tuned for more details and updates as the Kickstarter gets underway in the coming weeks.

I’ll be honest, I don’t even know why I’m being made to cover The Bureau: XCOM Declassified as much as I am. As I have made clear plenty of times before, the game’s existence bothers me, and rubs me off the wrong way.

On the other hand, the more I see of the game, the less outright opposed to it I become. I still don’t like the idea of a shooter based in the XCOM universe, but at least now I can see how it might work, and perhaps even more importantly, how it might be a good game on its own merits.

The newest trailer is admittedly not one of those videos that have had me hyped for the game even slightly at all. It’s a rather bizarre live action trailer, and it sort of feels like one of those old, grainy science fiction shows about alien invasions. At the very least, it gets the job done, I guess.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified releases in two weeks on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

Apparently, 2K Games will be re-revealing the game as a “squad-based tactical shooter” and is still in development by 2K Marin. Described as a “collaborative process of discovery and iteration”, the developer promises to showcase the game in a “matter of days”. Given the success of Enemy Unknown, 2K Games thinks it’s the right time to reveal their title.

The game is apparently a “high-stakes narrative experience imbued with core XCOM concepts”. That’s interesting, since the first reveal was far from anything that XCOM represented. Regardless, hopefully the finally reveal will be something of note – if not true to the spirit of the original series, then at least a strong action title.

This could be used to enable you to “point at any point of the screen. Which is intriguing because we’re always making mouse-driven games and things like that.

“So the new consoles are definitely adding things in that will make future PC development much more attractive in terms of ‘do we want to move this over?’. You don’t have to do quite the overall that you might normally have to do when you’re taking a game that’s made exclusively for the PC and port it over like that.”

As for whether Firaxis is indeed doing something for next gen, Shirk said that the Civilization side is “not specifically looking at hardware”, but can’t speak for the XCOM side.