Rumor Alert: Puerto Rico may be headed to XBLA
Gamstooge sums up the events currently in progress:
http://www.gamestooge.com/2007/03/02/hot-rumor-puerto-rico-to-xbox-live-arcade/
Wikipedia link for information about the game... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico_(game)
I've looked into this and this is what I can find.
Apparently, the site is paid by the publishers of these board games to put them on there site and earlier this year Alhambra was taken off the service. Some say that it was due to Microsoft getting the sole rights and some say it was due to this new fee that is imposed for placing it on the BSW website.
Recently, Puerto Rico was pulled due to Alea giving the electronic rights to a company, which users are presuming is Microsoft due to it's recent foray into euro board games like the soon to be released Settlers of Catan, Alhambra and Carcasonne.
The only thing with this is that BSW doesn't have Alhambra or Puerto Rico on it's service anymore but does have Catan and Carcassonne. Either Microsoft didn't get into the same deals with the makers of these to games or it wasn't Microsoft that purchased the rights to Puerto Rico.
Alea has yet to respond with who actually purchased those rights, so until that happens we will have to just wait and see.
This rumor has been speculated a lot at boardgamegeek since early this week. It kind of surprises me that they chose Puerto Rico instead of San Juan. Puerto Rico is considerably more complicated than the previously announced Eurogames. That would require a more complicated AI.
Joined: 2006-08-10