I love PopCap Games, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

While some deeply entrenched veteran gamers consider them a mainstream harbinger of doom, the fact is they have produced some of the most purely addictive games of this, or any, generation with titles like the hall of fame “Bejeweled,” “Plants vs Zombies,” “Bookworm,” and the glorious “Peggle.” They toe a fine line between “mainstream” (in the dirty word sense) and merely accessible, and their constant goal of gameplay over graphics and fun over flash is inspiring.

Which is why it’s sad to see that they have become the victim of some massive layoffs, as EA (who bought them out for around $750 million last year) announced the shuttering of the team’s Dublin studio. While the move has been long rumored, that’s certainly no condolence for the 96 employees who were laid off due to this move as they join the initial fired employees who lost their jobs when EA took over last year.

EA has been clear on their reason for this move, saying that they are trying to trim down aspects of PopCap that are similar to services they already offer, and the Dublin studio’s efforts apparently did not fit the need of EA in accordance to their plans moving forward. Both EA and PopCap have announced that many of the employees from the shuttered branch will have employment opportunities available at other PopCap locations and at EA operations, which include call center positions.

There’s far too many EA is the evil empire articles out there to still have any effect, and I don’t wish to contribute to them here. I will say this though. You may recall that PopCap gained a reputation early on for offering their games for free trial before purchase to help promote them. Even when they featured their games on Steam, they insisted the free demo still remain an option, as they were that confident in their products, and couldn’t wait to share them with the masses.

It’s just a shame then that such a company that held that philosophy had to fall to something like budget cuts and corporate strategy. Good luck to all of the employees of the former Dublin studio, and to PopCap itself who I hope can recover from this round of bad news and continue to produce at a high level.

That’s right, folks. PopCap has officially confirmed the development of Plants vs. Zombies for Xbox Live Arcade. There’s still no word on release date, achievements, multiplayer modes, or anything of that nature. It’s definitely coming, though, in all of it’s zombie crunching glory.

For those of you who don’t know about the Plants vs. Zombies phenomenon, you may not want to get started. Chances you’ll get sucked in are nearly guaranteed, and from there, your productivity is only destined to plummet. Here’s a quick snapshot of PopCap’s “key features” for the game.

* Play five game modes: Adventure, Mini-Games, Puzzle, Survival, plus the stress-free Zen Garden
* Conquer all 50 levels of Adventure mode — through day, night, and fog, in a swimming pool and on the rooftop
* Battle 26 types of zombies including pole-vaulters, snorkelers and “Zomboni” drivers
* Earn 49 powerful perennials and collect coins to buy a pet snail, power-ups and more!
* Open the Almanac to see all the plants and zombies, plus amusing “facts” and quotes
* Browse Crazy Dave’s shop for special plants and tools to stem any zombie assault
* Amazing graphics and soundtrack, plus a bonus music video
* Infinite replayability: the game is never the same experience twice!

Check back for more news – we’ll let you know as soon as PopCap issues a release date.

Source: WorthPlaying

This week Kombo.com got a chance to talk to Garth Chouteau, Senior Director of Public Relations at PopCap Games, you know, the guys responsible for hits like Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies. The Kombo interview focused on the future of the company, and whether there would be much more handheld/console content from them in the near future. There’s at least one piece of news I’m absolutely in love with.

Chouteau led up to the big news by talking about the success of Peggle on Xbox Live, which led the company to think about other games they could port to new platforms, including, you guessed it, the incredibly addictive Plants vs. Zombies. Here’s an excerpt from the podcast:

…Peggle for XBLA is a good example of a game that we took that was popular on the PC and we spent probably twice as long as anyone else would have figuring how to make that game really good for Xbox and Xbox Live Arcade, and I think you will see that with Plants Vs. Zombies–I don’t know the exact order in which that game will make its way onto other platforms, but it’s certainly been successful enough, quickly enough, that we’re looking at other platforms and deciding where we’ll take that game next…

Awesome, except it’s going to kill my productivity. Having PvZ on my computer is bad enough. Now I can have it virtually anywhere and so can you, if you have an iPhone that is. Chouteau addressed the mobile development issue like so:

…I don’t think you’ll see Plants vs. Zombies on a mobile phone. I think you may see it on the iPhone…some of our games, we would just say, ‘you know? We could probably sell a million of these, but people aren’t going to be happy with it…

Hey now, who asked you to care about the integrity of your product, Chouteau? Actually, I think this is pretty nice. The iPhone version of the game would have to be scaled considerably, and other mobiles would likely be even more limited, if for nothing more than screen space.

Still no word on release dates or even development progress. This is great news, though, and I’ll be anxiously awaiting the launch.