In the interview, when asked about Hartmann’s statement, Stewart was diplomatic, noting: “I could be frank, but I may want to work with him some day! Basically, he’s looking for a way to tell fans of a classic brand why they’re not getting an updated version of a classic, but a different type of game altogether with the name slapped on.”
“That’s their call, they own the brand – shooters are a big market – but I don’t know that you can rationalize the decision by blaming the genre, which is what he’s doing,” Stewart added. ”The idea being, shooters are awesome and strategy games suck, despite there being a lot of teams, Kerberos included, that have shown that you can absolutely take the old genres and make them contemporary, keep them true to their roots, and there is an audience there that is not inconsiderable.”
Stewart noted that while there was nothing wrong with a first person shooter version of XCOM, there was no reason that it could only be an FPS, saying: “X-Com earned its place in the gaming books and we should still be playing it, the best version of it possible, for years to come provided someone would just make it. It doesn’t HAVE to be a shooter.”
He then finished, “So if 2K doesn’t want to make an X-Com or X-Com-style strat game, that’s cool. Someone else can. I know we’d love to.”
