...and absolutely stunned by the lack of 2-player LOCAL content! Xbox Live is great and all, but I like niche games more than Halo and Lost Planet. Case-in-point, I just bought Catan, which is an awesome multi-player board game, only to find that you can only play it on Live for multiplayer? This doesn't make any sense, other than to lock people into their Live revenue stream by disallowing local play. Rediculous folks, especially with games that were designed to be community games. I want to be able to have friends over and play some games, not have to wait and wait to find one person playing Catan online who I don't even know.

What's the deal, Microsoft? Did you guys just forget the "local play" part of the whole gamer experience, or is it just not profitable enough? Or maybe you only focus on local play for more mainstream "shooter" type games?

Please please do an auto-update that allows local play for Catan and similar-type games. Castle Crashers is getting sooooo repetitive.

Ummmm...Catan requires you to conceal your development and resource cards. That would be a little difficult with local play. If you want to play with friends, you can set up games under player matches. You'll need to have 3 friends ready to play though as your chances of finding a random player will be slim.

First- welcome to the community!

Now, about your concerns... a lot of folks are disappointed by the lack of local-multi-player games. If you enjoy euro board games like Catan, try "Ticket to Ride" which does support local-multi (though you'll need another control.) There are very few "hot seat" games (local multi with only 1 controller.)

Catan is a great game but it has been very poorly supported by the developer so dont expect any major updates. (seafarers, and knights, are other requests we'll prob never see.) The real problem I see with local multi, besides hiding cards, is that the physical board game is $30 while the arcade version is only $10...Klaus Tuber prob doesnt want the arcade version eating into his primary sales so it was probably a condition in the license.

My suggestion is to enjoy the game the way my GF and I do- take turns playing together as a team against the AI opponents. If you have 3 or more folks ready to play, well, then break out the real board!

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Can YOU Escape from the Dead?