(Settlers of) Catan on XBLA?!?!

With the release of one of the world’s best (and most expandable) traditional agrarian strategy board games, XBOX Live Arcade on the 360 has solidified itself (in my mind anyway) as THE premiere download service.

For a lot of us, I know, this revelation was already a no-brainer…

but, over the past year or so, the sheer variety and quality of downloadable software on the service has proven to be in many ways more valuable and entertaining than the “full” DVD 1st and 3rd party software.

I love my 360, and Catan has given me another great reason to stay in and be social with XBL gamers around the world.

If you’ve never played Settlers of Catan, and you have an XBOX360, you owe it to yourself to download it today … and if you don’t have a 360 … you can buy the original “analog” version at most good comic book/gaming stores.

Analog board games still rock…except Monopoly.

I still prefer the variety I get with PC free/sharewares without having to wait for Microsoft to publish something over XBLA. For those of you without a 360 that still want to try Catan, just do a google search and you’ll probably find several conversions.

That said it’s nice to see there are ways for smaller devs to get a piece of the console pie. I’ll always buy games on PC myself (currently looking forward to Aquaria) but I’m glad when developers get the chance for extra exposure via Steam, XBLA or other platforms.