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.
I’ve had to make a conscious effort not to get Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone, simply because I know I’ll spend too much of my life playing it. That game is insanely addictive, to a point I think is fair to consider unhealthy. A couple hundred thousand people have been bitten by this brainless monster, putting the total sales figures for just 9 days at a million bucks.