PopCap plans to launch Plants vs. Zombies Social Edition ... in China

This morning, PopCap announced details about a social version of its big hit Plants vs. Zombies, which will soon launch exclusively -- not on Facebook -- but on Renren.com, which is China's version of Facebook with 117 million users.

"The passion for Plants vs. Zombies here in China is incredible. PvZ has tremendous, unprecedented brand awareness and popularity in China with almost one million people already signed up to a PvZ page on Renren.com," says James Gwertzman, VP of Asia/Pacific at PopCap Games.

The tower defense game in which you use different types of plants to keep shuffling cartoon zombies from invading your house (and eating your brains) will been enhanced with new modes and social features.

Players can create and invite friends to visit custom-created towns in the game and check out the new Rampage mode, where you have two-minutes to take down as many zombies as possible. Much like PopCap's Bejeweled Blitz or Zuma Blitz, a leaderboard will keep track of you and your friends' scores (and will reset every week to fuel the fires of competition.) There will be regular content updates as well -- with new zombies and powerups rolling out on a weekly basis.

I'm sure there are a million business reasons as to why Plants vs. Zombies Social Edition will exclusively be available on Renren, but as an unrepentant PvZ fan, I hope that exclusivity lasts for a limited time or that PopCap is hard at work on another (more awesome) English language version that will eventually live on Facebook.