EA's studio Pokai announced last night the "ultimate edition" of "Plants vs. Zombies" - "Plants vs. Zombies: Remastered Edition", which supports 4K resolution and will be released on October 23 this year for $20. It will be available on PC (EA App, Epic, Steam), Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
"Plants vs. Zombies: Remastered Edition" adds local co-op and PvP modes, two additional game modes - Rest in Peace, a permanent death mode for meat pigeons, and Cloudy Day mode, which increases difficulty by limiting sunlight, plus an art gallery showing previously unreleased concept art.
Executive producer Jake Neri described the game as "the ultimate PvZ remake" and said it was Poka's strategy to "preserve the magic of the original while giving it a freshness that will keep it alive for another 20-plus years."
When asked why the remaster was released now, Neri explained: "We've heard for a long time that people are going to love a remaster of this game. Timing is important. We just celebrated the 16th anniversary of PvZ, which may sound a little weird, but at Pokai, we are weird like that."
Reinhart added: "This has definitely been brewing for a while and we've been talking about how to bring everything together."
The announcement of "Plants vs. Zombies: Remastered Edition" comes at a critical moment for the "Plants vs. Zombies" series. Previously, Baokai spent at least six years testing various versions of "Plants vs. Zombies 3" on smartphones.
"Plants vs. Zombies 3" was finally released globally in January 2024, and was later taken offline in October 2024 for another "major revision." It has been nearly a year and the game has still not been re-launched overseas.
Reinhart said: "My official answer is that I have nothing to say about Plants vs. Zombies 3 (overseas version) at this time. At least in 2025, the focus of the series seems to be the remastered version - although there are currently no plans for the remastered version to come to smartphones, this will pave the way for Plants vs. Zombies to return to the smartphone market at some point in the future."
