Plants vs. Zombies 3 gets a new soft launch ahead of worldwide release

thesixthaxis.com:

PopCap has released Plants vs. Zombies 3 for iOS and Android in a new soft launch ahead of a full worldwide launch.

Out now in the UK, Netherlands, Australia and Philippines, Plants vs. Zombies 3 is a fresh entry in the massively popular tower defence game series, just over a decade on from PvZ2 was released in 2013. The soft launch will let PopCap gather feedback and make tweaks before the full release.

This new game has the classic mutant plants defending against zombies gameplay as the originals, but now comes with a new episodic narrative as you fight to save Neighborville. There’s some new puzzle-adventure gameplay elements being thrown into the mix, and a mixture of classic plants and new creations.

This isn’t actually the first time that the game has been soft-launched. EA first announced Plants vs. Zombies 3 back in 2019 and launched a pre-alpha build a few months later. The game then soft-launched in early 2020, but was pulled from those territories later that year. Another soft-launch came in late 2021 with big changes like a switch back to 2D graphics and the return of the Sunflower, and there was limited testing in 2022 as well. This new soft launch does sound like PopCap are getting closer to an actual full release though.

The original Plants vs. Zombies was a big hit for PopCap in 2009 and, alongside puzzle game hits Bejeweled and Peggle, was one of the key reasons why EA chose to snap up the company in 2011. It’s fair to say that PopCap hasn’t really kicked on from their pre-EA days, with PvZ2 shifting to a controversial for the time free-to-play mobile business model, and revisiting Peggle and Bejeweled on mobile. Their last new mobile games came all the way back in 2016, which is surprising given how wildly popular cheap match 3 and other puzzle games still are on mobile. Perhaps their output was affected more heavily than expected by layoffs in 2017.

The exception here is PopCap Vancouver, who produced the surprisingly good Plants vs. Zombies: Garden