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Catan on Live, PopCap on Steam
Two interesting bits of news on the casual gaming front today. GI.biz reports that PopCap games has signed a deal with Valve to have their games offered on Steam. The casual Xbox Live Arcade will also be getting some new visitors, though of a much more hard-core variety. Classic German boardgame Settlers of Catan will headline a trio of titles for Microsoft's downloadable games service, Gamespot reports. From that article: "Outpost Kaloki X is about to have some genre company on Xbox Live Arcade, as all three titles will call on strategic thinking from the players. The announced games include the civilization-building Settlers of Catan, the tile-based city-building game Carcassonne, and the Arabian-themed stock-market game Alhambra set to be available through the Xbox."
You want to play modern board games online? Go to BrettSpielWelt. Free, online playing of over a hundred boardgames. Not only Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne, but also Caylus, Citadels, Medina, Power Grid, Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Ra, San Juan, and many, many, many more. The language to use is English at most of the site. Warning: there are many very strong players there, so prepare for a humiliating defeat at your favorite game.
If you want to play it without having to shell out for a console, there is a open source java version here.
Best way to play it though is of course around a table with some good friends.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
The good news part 1: In addition to Settlers of Catan, you can play 62 other games.
The good news part 2: There is a web client so that you can play on virtually any platform.
The good news part 3: There are platform specific clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux so that you can have a better UI than in the web client.
The good news part 4: It's all free.