Xbox Live Arcade Gets Board With Carcassonne

Sierra Online's electronic version of Klaus-Jürgen Wrede's popular board game Carcassonne will mark this week's Xbox Live Arcade release, Microsoft revealed today. Arriving on the Xbox 360 download service early Wednesday morning, the full version will sell for 800 Microsoft Points ($10). The second board game to hit Xbox Live Arcade--the first being Big Huge Game's Catan in May, based on Klaus Teuber's award-winning Settlers of Catan--Carcassonne supports matches of up to five players via Xbox Live and up to four players offline. Unlike Catan, in which players make the best use of a randomized map, Carcassonne has players instead creating the surrounding landscape by laying tiles as well as building towns, roads, and farms while they race to acquire the most points. Featuring simple rules that provide for a number of different approaches and gameplay styles, Sierra Online's Carcassonne will include both the initial 72 tiles of the original game and the added tiles of the Rivers expansion pack. Along with today's announcement, Microsoft also sent along several new screenshots.