PopCap’s Matt Townsend notes that the sequel is “All about capturing that classic experience we all know and love and bringing it to the modern mobile experience. We want old fans to revel in the experience and strategy, meet up with old friends, and help Dave all over Town – all while bringing in a whole new generation to help defend against the ever looming threat of Dr. Zomboss.”

Along with the return of Sunflower, there will be an emphasis on puzzles along with the standard strategy gameplay. It’s currently being released in Australia and the Philippines on the Google Play Store via open beta for a short time. A Samsung Galaxy S6 or equivalent with Android 7 and 2 GB of RAM is recommended.

Plants vs. Zombies 3 is still a long ways off from release – Townsend notes that, “This is just the beginning of us building towards an awesome future.” There will be new features and new areas detailed overtime along with more testing opportunities in the future so stay tuned.

PopCap Games may have flirted extensively with the Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare franchise but it’s going back to its roots. The developer announced that Plants vs. Zombies 3 is in development for mobiles with a pre-alpha out later today. It will be on the Google Play Store, but iOS users will have to wait for their turn.

The pre-alpha will have a limited number of downloads in “phases” so check back daily for your chance to get in. In terms of specs, a Samsung Galaxy S7 is recommended or at least something comparable with Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The pre-alpha is focused primarily on acquiring feedback for combat features. Any content in the pre-alpha is subject to change at launch.

The game’s official FAQ states that the pre-alpha will be free to play and there will (hilariously) be no microtransactions. That could very well change in the lead-up to launch so keep that in mind. Stay tuned for more details – we’re still a ways off from a full-blown worldwide release.

Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a single-player title set after the fallout of Order 66, will be out in November. EA has some fairly big ambitions for the title, especially considering it’s the flagship Star Wars title for this year. In its conference call following the Q4 and FY2019 results (as noted by Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad), EA said it forecasts six to eight million units shipped in fiscal year 2020.

That’s by March 31st, 2020, and probably isn’t too crazy, since the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker should feed into the hype. Interestingly, EA also shared forecasts for the next Need for Speed and Plants vs. Zombies games. The former will ship “approximately” four million units, as per the publisher, while the latter will hit “low single digit million units.”

Neither title has been outright announced formally, but they’re slated to release in Fall 2019. Perhaps we’ll hear more at EA Play 2019. EA also expects Apex Legends, its free to play battle royale title (which is also slated for mobiles and China), to hit $300 to $400 million in this fiscal year.

$EA Conference Call:

– Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order is forecasted to ship 6-8m units in FY20
– Approx 4m units for Need for Speed
– Plants vs Zombies is expected to reach low single digit million units.
– Apex Legends expected to book $300m-$400m in FY20.

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) May 7, 2019

Off the back of its third quarter FY 2019 earnings report, Electronic Arts admitted to under-performing in the period. There is some good news though – a new full-priced Titanfall game is coming this year (separate from the recently released Apex Legends), and the publisher is projecting Anthem to sell five to six million copies by March 31st. Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will also be releasing in the Fall.

However, there are other projects coming this Fall, particularly for series like Need for Speed and Plants vs. Zombies. That’s right – new titles for both are slated for this year, and we’re assuming they’re be revealed at E3 2019. EA has stated that both games, along with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, will release during the Q3 FY 2020 period (which runs from October 1st to December 31st 2019).

The publisher also confirmed that it will continue to support Apex Legends as well as Anthem. Respawn has promised additional content like Battle Passes for Apex Legends, while BioWare has confirmed that it’s hard at work on post-launch content for Anthem. The latter is out on February 22nd for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

It sounds like in addition to all the projects we do know that EA’s Motive studio is up to, they may actually be working on another one. So, a quick recap first- the studio has two offices, one in Montreal, and the other in Vancouver. The Vancouver office is currently working on a new open world Star Wars game, and also a new Plants vs Zombies game, while the Montreal branch is helping on Star Wars, and working on a new open world action adventure IP.

With me so far? Good, because it seems like there is more. Speaking to Game Informer, EA Motive’s Jade Raymond, best known for her tenure at Ubisoft, where she stewarded the Assassin’s Creed franchise for a while, confirmed that there’s another game in the works in the Montreal studio.

“In Montreal, we have a big IP and then we have a second project, and the thing that I’m really excited about is that project was totally born from three passionate people who just worked on a pitch in their spare time,” Raymond said. “They were super passionate, saying ‘let us prototype it, let us do it,’ and we managed to give them some space to get it done because it was exciting. People saw what was going on and more people wanted to join their team. Now it’s a fully-fledged project, so we were able to get that going within Motive, which I think is one of the benefits of having a smaller studio.”

That’s good to hear, of course. Still, between Star Wars, Plants vs Zombies, the new IP, and now this brand new project, I just hope Motive doesn’t end up stretching itself too thin. It could happen, even with two studios- I just hope they prioritize and focus on one game at a time, and that all four games that are delivered are the best they can be as a result of that focus.

EA Motive, the Jade Raymond led new EA studio that worked on the single player campaign in Star Wars Battlefront 2, has now expanded to two offices- one, the original, being in Montreal, with a new office in Vancouver. That’s good news, because it indicates increased bandwidth for the studio, but that’s nit the end of it.

Apparently, the studio is now hiring for Star Wars (of course), Plants vs Zombies (which is interesting- could they be making a single player game set in the Plants vs Zombies universe? Ordinarily I would be excited at the prospect, but EA kills dreams, so I don’t know…), and, most interestingly, a new IP.

I don’t know if any of these games will necessarily be shown off at E3 during EA Play this year, particularly if they just started development- but, on the other hand, maybe we’ll get some teasers, right? That should hype EA’s conference up.

This is really cool. Motive has officially expanded to two offices!

Montreal and Vancouver are hiring for Star Wars, Plants vs. Zombies, and new IP. https://t.co/P010eZjriS pic.twitter.com/dKWomMVRGR

— Mitch Dyer (@MitchyD) June 1, 2018

CEO of PopCap Interactive John Vechey who has been with the studio since the beginning as its co-founder and oversaw development on games like Plants vs. Zombies and Peggle has departed from the studio. Vechey is the final member of the original founding team to leave after Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka departed in recent years.

Vechey’s marriage and spending time with his daughter his inspired him to do more in his life, according to a letter he sent his colleagues, and he will be joining an NPO for solving “peace and social justice issues, such as war abolition, prison reform, poverty and the effects of race and gender privilege.”

Vechey believes in EA CEO Andrew Wildon’s “vision of a company that puts its players first” and stated that, “The best years are ahead for both EA and PopCap, and I look forward to watching development teams live up to what it means to be electronic artists.”

Meanwhile, EA Labels presideent Frank Gibeau noted on the EA Blog that, “John is a rare breed. His personal vitality and true passion for fun helped to define the spirit of PopCap and the games they make.”

At least that “all new Peggle” is coming though, right?

With regards to move away from the popular Zuma to focus on relatively new franchises like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies, Vechey stated that, “Those franchises are going to be some of the biggest franchises in the games industry. But even then it’s not without risk. When you try to create evergreen franchises you can actually screw it up.

“This is one of the most important things that we have to remember: hubris. Arrogance is the enemy of a long-lasting company. Arrogance is the enemy of a franchise. Just because we have Bejeweled or Plants Vs Zombies doesn’t mean we can do a crappy job. We need to constantly ask ourselves, is this a good product? Is this a good investment?”

Of course, it wasn’t necessarily easy to get Zuma on to tablets and smartphones. “Zuma, in the first ten years of the history of the company, was one of the big franchises at Popcap. This was before Bejewelled and before PvZ. The thing is, the market changed and Zuma just doesn’t feel great on a touch device. There’s no way to make that feel perfect. So we as a company had to make a decision to say ‘we’re going to walk away from that even though it’s done great for us’.

“Be honest about where a franchise is in its lifecycle. Be honest about if it’s truly evergreen.”

(Source)

Electronic Arts has started teasing something funny towards PopCap’s famous strategy game Plants vs Zombies.

Take a peek below:

It looks like that Plants vs Zombies will be getting a skin overhaul for one of the most common enemies in the game. This will probably be something for PopCap’s recently announced sequel Plants vs Zombies 2 instead of the original game that has been out for quite some time now and has had many re-releases on multiple platforms.

Electronic Arts has not released any kind of official information in regards to these teaser images that they have shown to the public, so it’s safe to say an announcement will be coming soon.

Let us know what you think of this funny teaser from EA and Bioware in the comments below.

Check back on GamingBolt for more updates.

EA will be shutting down three of their Facebook games due to their restructuring. The three games that will be going down are Sims Social, Pet Society, and SimCity Social. The servers for these titles will be going offline on June 14th 2013.

Refunds will not be given on currency that was purchased for the free-to-play social games on Facebook despite the shut down.

However, EA will be giving players “a special offer to introduce you to a PopCap game,” according to this statement. EA will be going towards PopCap games. PopCap are very well known for block-buster casual indie titles such as Plants vs Zombies and Peggle.

EA bought PopCap games back in July 2012. Ever since  John Riccitello resgiend back in March, EA has been going through some major changes including the closure of their Montreal studio which was responsible for free-to-play social games.

Stay tuned on GamingBolt for more news regarding EA and their future plans. Leave any comments you have down below.