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Catan on Live, PopCap on Steam

Posted by Zonk on from the we-built-this-city-on-wheat-and-stone dept.

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."

1 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Do they know what they're getting into? by Bieeanda · · Score: 4, Insightful
    They could be a good excuse for more people to leave the Steam launcher sitting in the task tray, especially since they've finally got Steam's IM functions working again. Right-click the icon, pop the games launcher open almost instantly, and play a bit of Chuzzle. If someone you know wants to drag you into a CS match, you can switch over with ease.

    Steam is associated with shooters and action games right now, but there's no reason why it has to stay that way. Its distribution system would be ideal for Popcap, because their games are small enough to download fairly quickly on dialup, and all of the authorizations are stored on the server side. Go over to a friend's place (or work) and download the Steam client, then download the games you've already purchased licenses for. Popcap doesn't have to worry about mailing media out, or people passing installer discs around to their friends, which saves on expenses.

    The two services' pricing structures are already rather close. There are several expansions, episodes and mods available for less than a twenty, which is the same general range that Popcap games fall into. Near-instant gratification for a fairly low price is a very good way to separate people from their money.