What do you think are the minis for?

From what I can tell, and this is entirely speculation, you just manage them more as resources. ie. "we need to send troops over to Australia to contain the threat there" type stuff as opposed to "I move 3 spaces and cast magic missile" type stuff. If so they probably could've been tokens, but minis are still neat and up the production value.

I kind of think that doesn't sound right... sure it would feel an look better to have minis in place of resources... but that amps the cost of production a lot... I know that the images of the board(s) FFG published doesn't leave place for "miniatures battles"... and neither the description of the game, but.....somehow 16 xcom soldier minis seems kind of out of place, if they are just used as resources, don't you think?

Well looking at this picture they're just sitting on the location/battle cards like they've been allotted to certain areas: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/xcom/website/XC01_layout.png

Another interesting this I've just noticed is that they appear to have slots to put a card or token in (upgrades/equipment?) You can see them in this picture

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/xcom/website/FinalMission.png

...I think you're absolutely right!

mmm...but...uh...that kind of upgrade (once again) would work better with a miniature that sees some movement/fighting à la "classic" miniatures games rather than sitting there as resources. I'm baffled.

The different sculpts are presumably for the different specialisations (i.e, heavy, sniper, support, etc). The slot is to add equipment and/or new skills.

I guess it could have been done with tokens, but there's the FFG "coolness factor" to consider.

I actually wish there were more minis. The Scientist chits are crying out to be changed to minis of lab-coated boffins!

Given that there are four specialties of soldier and each can carry equipment, a mini with a slot in the base makes more sense than a counter in my opinion. It conveys all the information required without the need for separate tokens for each specialty or stacked tokens where only the top one is visible.