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."

Comments

Re:Settlers of Catan

[legoburner]

Being a fan of Catan (dead-tree version), I hope they make something very similar. The PC versions that I have played so far are not as fun as the real thing but I think that is down to 2 things:
1. Tactile response ... being able to move the theif and push him right into that 6 wheat producing hex
2. Communication ... getting those trades announced with the right tone in your voice.

Thankfully I think the xbox 360 version will take care of #2. Though now I cant help but imagine trash-talking catan players which would be a bit odd. Still, adds to the temptation to get an xbox 360.

Mod Parent up!

[trip11]

BSW really is a great place to play strategy games online. Not only that, it is a good place to try out a game and see if you like it before spending $40 on something awful at the store. The only downside is that it can be a bit intimidating and un-intuitive to someone new to the system. Esp if you don't speak German. However there is a great website for all of us english speakers to help get the feel of the game.
http://englishtown.brettspielwelt.info/
I would also recomend downloading the client and not playing in the browser. It's java based and mulit-platform. Plus if you get the client, the english town website has an english config file for it which translates all of the controls for you. Best of all it is entirely free and litterally filled with players so you can play any time you like.

Never in a million years...

[The-Bus]

would I have imagined that this game would come to Xbox Live. Furthermore, outside of Slashdot (and even here), there's going to be a huge amount of people who are going to say... "What?"

I know it's de rigueur to mention "The Long Tail", but this is a great example of it; the Long Tail is a theory that in the future, businesses will need to sell small amounts of a huge variety.

Ideally, Catan fever will spread worldwide to a brand new audience. But also, putting a game like this on a console really sets it apart to big Catan fans. Xbox Live Arcade has the possibility to do that by releasing niche games that the target audience really wants. I loathe anecdotal evidence, but I know of two people that have bought an Xbox simply for one of the arcade games (Geometry Wars and Street Fighter).

Microsoft does seem to be serious about this. At Leipzig they also announced that they will "own football" by making Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 Xbox 360 exclusives. Sony's own Winning Eleven series is of course not affected.

Now, if they'd only give Europe what they really want: fairly priced hardware and software.