Chewing Europe's ear soon

When Plants vs. Zombies was announced for DS last year, developer PopCap said it had no plans to bring the game across to reach European gamers. With the title now sat on store shelves across North America, UK publisher Mastertronic has announced a partnership with PopCap to bring the game to British gamers.

The partnership doesn't refer to any other Nintendo titles, nor does it give a release date for Plants vs. Zombies, but it's good news that the game will be reaching Europe after all.

Mastertronic, the UK’s leading independent publisher of computer and videogames, has signed a deal with worldwide casual games leader, PopCap Games, creator of record breaking game brands such as Bejeweled®, Peggle®and Plants vs. Zombies™. As part of this deal, Mastertronic will bring a number of PopCap’s award-winning casual game franchises for PC, handheld and console formats to retail across the UK, Europe and PAL territories.

PopCap is widely regarded as a founding father of the casual games industry. Since its inception in 2000, PopCap has solidified its reputation as a games pioneer by innovating new game genres and successfully adapting to an ever-changing market, earning them an enviable reputation as a hugely successful worldwide brand of casual games.

The partnership will kick off with the launch of PopCap®Hits on Xbox 360, a collection of four stellar titles: Bejeweled 2, Peggle, Feeding Frenzy™ and AstroPop™. This will be closely followed by Plants vs. Zombies for Nintendo DS and PopCap Hits Volume 2, another four-game pack featuring Plants vs. Zombies, Zuma®, Feeding Frenzy 2 and Heavy Weapon™.

In addition to these releases Mastertronic will also be publishing three PopCap titles on PC – Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled ® Blitz and Amazing Adventures the Caribbean
Secret™, followed by more Mastertronic published PopCap games to be announced for Quarter 2.

Garry Williams, Mastertronic’s Business Development Director commented, “PopCap is a fantastic company with proven selling titles that consumers love to play. Our job is to use our existing publishing agreements on all the major platforms to help PopCap get these sure-fire hits into retail on as many formats as possible. To date, digital was the main avenue to exploit these record-breaking titles, the success of the Wii and now Kinect has shown that there is a new raft of consumers that value these casual and playable family releases. PopCap has been quick to realize that these games can replicate the digital and PC success on a variety of new entertainment formats.”

Mark Cochrane PopCap’s Senior Director of Business Development EMEA said: “PopCap’s core business is to make great games that everyone, anywhere can play. We are delighted to partner with Mastertronic to bring our console games to retail in Europe.”