Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare launching without microtransactions

We put twin snakes on our Chomper because we could.

PopCap Games designed Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare to have deep customization options. To test that out, we added a pair of snakes to a giant purple plant with fangs when we played the upcoming third-person shooter last month.

In Garden Warfare, players unlock customizations and upgrades with stickers, and they buy stickers with coins. Players can amass coins in two ways: by playing the game to earn them by or purchasing coin packs with real money through microtransactions. Those microtransactions, however, won't be in the game it launches next month.

"So we're not going to have any microtransactions at all at launch," producer Brian Lindley told GameSpot. Instead, PopCap will use player feedback and metrics to determine what happens after launch.

When we saw the game recently, PopCap told Polygon that players can earn an average of 15,000 to 18,000 coins per hour by playing the game.

"Everything is unlockable through gameplay," said Gary Clay, senior franchise marketing manager for Plants vs. Zombies. "In fact, some of the things are only unlockable through gameplay. This is pretty much identical to how the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer works."

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will launch on Xbox 360 and Xbox One Feb. 25 in North America and Feb. 27 in Europe. You can learn more about the game's co-op modes in our hands-on impressions and find out how PopCap transformed 2D characters into 3D assets in our developer interview.