At some point late last week Take-Two began removing all traces of 2K Marin’s XCOM game (that would be the first-person shooter XCOM, not the strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown) from their internet sites. As it stands now, the shooter’s official website returns a “404 error” and all of its previously released trailers have been removed from 2K Games’ YouTube channel.
The publisher has not yet commented on the reasons behind the XCOM disappearing act, but it is hard to view the removal of the game’s official media websites as a positive sign.
Last month Superannuation speculated that the XCOM shooter was in the process of being rebranded, based on Take-Two’s recent domain registrations for thebureau-game.com, thebureau-game.net, whathappenedin62.com, and whathappenedin62.net. While certainly not a confirmation, the decision to suddenly remove all XCOM assets from Take-Two’s official internet websites seems to back up the rebranding theory.
XCOM was originally announced with a March 6, 2012 release date but was later pushed back to Take-Two’s fiscal year 2013 (sometime between April 1, 2012 and March 31, 2013). In May 2012 2K Games announced another delay for the title’s release window, moving it to an unspecific “fiscal 2014” launch date — sometime before March 31, 2014. The last official XCOM statement from Take-Two came on February 5, 2013 during the publisher’s last earnings call. At that time the company reconfirmed the “fiscal 2014” release window, and noted that “2K Marin continue[d] to make progress on XCOM“.
Take-Two’s fourth quarter 2013 earnings call is currently scheduled for May 13, 2013. Assuming the company does not officially announce the status of the XCOM shooter before the earnings report, they will be obligated to tell investors of any major changes to the game or its release date at that time. We will keep an eye out for any official announcement from the publisher on the situation with XCOM and let you know as soon anything is revealed.
