Ok this is already all over the web, heck even Tycho from PA commented on it, but that speed demon of a website 1UP.com is reporting that Microsoft announced that, "Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Alhambra would all be appearing on Xbox Live."

I love Settlers and was pretty pleased to see the game come to the Zone. However after playing for a little while it kinda sucked. Not a lot of players and too easy to drop a game. I much prefer the free, horribly buggy and amazingly frustrating Sea3D. Sea3D is basically a free Windows client to play the game online. I am not sure how they get away with it, but for a period I was a complete Sea3D addict. The nice ( and not so nice ) thing was unless you were will to open the Kimono and punch mammoth sized holes in your firewall you couldn't host a game. The game tracked quits and drops and the few people who did host were reticent to allow quitters to join their games. Thus there was an incentive ... or ... disincentive not to quit and hang on to a losing game. My concern is that unless they really penalize people for quitting there will be precious few completed games and a lot of frustrated players.

I am going to buy the game anyway.

You can find Java-versions of some of these games here: http://games.asobrain.com/index.html