Right, that's exactly the comparison I would make. XCOM has higher production values, sure. But other than that? XCOM took me about 20hrs to finish, this one took me 12. And the superior editor of SRR makes up for that shortcoming. XCOM's battle are cool, but only for a while. XCOM cost me three times as much and probably had what, 20x the budget or more? Yet to me it is the inferior game of the two, I enjoyed SRR far more. And the possibilities of SRR are huge when people start making mods, making me believe the hours spent on that game will rise with time. XCOM? Standing on the shelf collecting dust (actually the virtual shelf of uninstalled Steam games, but that didn't sound quite as good.).
Yeah I do see some positives and think they could turn SRR into something pretty decent. But it looks like a lot more work to me and I'm not sure they are going to do it. If they had the same approach as Paradox and Stardock do with their games, then what we have now would be a reasonable, if minimal, start for something cooler down the line.