XCOM: Enemy Unknown was released in October 2012, Enemy Within was released in November 2013, versions for Linux and SteamOS were released in June 2014. I'd hardly call that abandoned. Firaxis is probably busy with Beyond Earth and Starships at the moment, if the new XCOM was profitable a sequel will be made. In the mean time I suggest playing other games, or try the Long War mod.

Rhonin, I love both the Enemy unknown and Enemy within. They are both awesome sauce. However, there has been zero word from Firaxis in over a year on anything Xcom. I also have the Long War mod, tough very tough. 

'Abandon' has far heavier implications than what you use it for. Cause if we go by your logic then Nintendo abandons Super Mario, Zelda and Mario Kart after every consolerelease 

The current Master of Magic rightsholder have definetly abandoned Master of Magic though this is the strongest example I can find.

You must be one of those "like the original or NO!" guys. You should be happy for what you get and hope for better.

Did you find Xenonauts as great as the original?

Hardly, but since this appears to be a trick question (well, statement), I'll respond to both parts.  Branding fills me with ennui, not passion.  I'm quite capable of looking at a game on its own (most people can, suggesting otherwise is disingenuous).

Sure, I might hope for better, but the rest of that statement is just hogwash.

It's a bit difficult to compare a game I played last year to one I played 20 years ago in that way.  Xenonauts is the most like the original that I've played (excluding TFTD of course), but they are different games.  In most ways Xenonauts is a better game.  There is less inventory management, less randomness (or the RNG kind) and numerous interface improvements (although there is plenty of room for improvement here still).

In my opinion the major flaws in Xenonauts are the game engine, funding is heavily biased toward air superiority, lack of research or equipment to help defend against psionic attacks, and lack of a training facility type building for bases.

agreed, I think xcom is one of those titles that will forever be difficult to recapture the "magic".  since I played the original, there have been many attempts to kick start the genere with a yet another reimaging, they all fell short one way or another in ways that were difficult do describe, ven its own sequel tftd.  The ones that did best  were not the ones that slavishly attempted to ape everything in the original(one a few years ago that has legally different but basically identical ideas comes to mind.. ufo afterlight?).  The ones that did best were games that said "xcom was the defining squad based tactical geosim game" & did their own thing from there.

xcom:EU  was a great game for what it was & I got tons of enjoyment out of it, xenonauts is likewise a  good game but...

I find that the maps are just too crowded & ranges too short given the bizarre advancement system exacerbates the lack of training type facillity.  there are a ton of mods for it in the steam workshop, some pretty good improvements, but the killbox entrance you have to pass through w/ every ufo is the most bothersome thing IMO & one of the mods helps there

Now, if SD made something  (maybe  early Iconian v: Yor set in pre hyperdrives?) as a squad based tactical geosim type thing without going into the xcom mythos, it could be very interesting since the yor aren't yet another alien invader but a part of society that one day achieved a technological singularity & was not hard to reach due to orders of magnitude higher technology coming from hammerspace, but simply because they don't need to breathe & can trivially colonize asteroids, the sea floor, etc to grow in strength from (or vice versa simply because all of the existing infrastructure is still iconian).  

It doesn't take much reading from the yor tech briefings to realize thatsomeone at stardock wants to dive into the exploring newfound sapience+sentience pool & a squad based geosim type thing set during the pre-hyperdrive yor/iconian period could be a great place for it to start blossoming in ways that would be more difficult to do on galactic scales.

No trick question.

I've seen so much negativity from people who liked the oldschool games that are NEVER happy whatever they get nowadays.

I meant that you should be happy for what you get considering we've gotten both X-COM: EW and Xenonauts. You think we're gonna get anything better than that soon?   Far as I know, X-COM: EW and Xenonauts are the only games of the 'UFO Defense' type we've gotten in the last 5 years.

Give the Geoscape back to X-Com! And stop dumbing down stuff for the Console Kiddies! And the Console grown ups as well! I know you're getting older. You can't fool me!  

X-com by Firaxis was very fun. I spent countless hours. There has been no update to the game since last January. My request here really is for nearly the same game but better, just like we are doing with GC III. Same as GC II but better, larger maps, prettier units, better gameplay. 

For a tactical game I love both Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within. All were fun. 

Many Xcom fans think that Apocalypse was the best of the original 3 (I am inclined to agree, but it was different enough that if you felt it went to far astray that's fine).  The mess that came after that wasn't xcom anyway and no one thinks that they were.

the UFO series has some fans, and it's not bad, but it's not xcom either...  if you just liked the game play mechanically you were probably happy (I really enjoyed UFO:ET, the rest I didn't bother with after seeing that they didn't really do anything that I felt was that interesting).  If you wanted Xcom lore then you weren't happy.  Kind of like the difference between MoOs and any other space 4x.  Some of them were good, or at least ok, but since they didn't have the back story of MoO a lot of people crapped on them anyway.  Which I did to GalCiv, though after many years of playing it and CG2 I finally decided that I just didn't like the mechanics in GC enough to like it no matter how little I cared about the races.

Then you get to XCOM:EU and EW.  A massive effort which was incredibly well done.  Unless you played on a console, but who cares about console players anyway

Of course everyone is free to prefer whatever they prefer, but to crap on EU stinks of sour grapes frankly, because the stuff it does right, it really does right.  The stuff it does wrong... well it really wasn't that important anyway

But largely the 2T vs. TU split was huge, and if you really really needed your tedious and silly time units back then you were never going to like XCOM anyway.  If you could adapt (or even preferred) the 2T style you were immediately immersed in a much more fluid and unforgiving tactical game than the original Xcom could ever dream of.

2T over TU isn't a flaw, it's a massive improvement!  TU was bogged down by micromanaging and ridiculous turn plotting due to the advantage of one square creep.

Lack of bases is a personal thing, neither is obviously superior to the other in my opinion, it's down to personal choice.

And I'm not sure what version of Xcom you played where high level characters were never heroes, not sure if it was better or worse in which version, but the perk tree in XCOM at least gives you a significantly superior role playing opportunity, if that's your thing (it's not mine personally, but it works).

As to bad tactics (or just insanely stupid alien placement) from the original...  spare me.

You could (and many did) just blaster bomb the entire map and then run a spotter so that everyone else could snipe anything on the entire map from literally anywhere else.  Tactics in the original became unappealing and trivial far too quickly.

2T and pod activation mechanics can lead to certain encounters equally being trivial, yet some missions (maps really) see you getting swarmed without access to proper cover so that you really do have to figure out a plan beyond 'blaster bomb everything'.

Anyway, like what you like, I'll like what I like, and everyone else can like what they like

The new X-Com's two moves per turn versus the Time Units of the original X-Com.

Sniping from anywhere on the map?  Like upgraded snipers on a roof with squad sight that have 90%+ accuracy from across the map and fire twice per turn?  I played through EU with two super snipers that never died while my nearly impossible to kill heavy and supports provided backup for the fast moving assault with crit immunity and high health.  Casualties were non-existent.

The core of tactics for beating EU on higher difficulty levels is to keep two snipers alive long enough to get upgraded to where they'll kill everything you flush out but can't drop with your other units.

The big problem with 2T is that they made actions a simple thing, not that they did a two part turn system.  They didn't even give an aim bonus for not moving before you fire.

Quoting Wintercross,

reply 24

 The thing that bugs me so much is reading about their original prototype, they basically kept the same mechanics of the original, albeit with improved UI and technology. They tested it with people in the studio and Xcom fans loved it, while people who had never played Xcom found it 'slow' and too hard. So they dumbed it down.

And that right there is why gaming makes me sad as I get older.