Microsoft has announced a new lineup of games for Windows Phone 7 (WP7). According to the company’s Windows Phone blog, it will launch six new games for WP7-based handsets in the Spring. This includes Angry Birds, which has already proved extremely popular on rival smartphone platforms. The other five releases are Doodle Jump, Plants vs Zombies; Hydro Thunder Go; Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Episode 1; and geoDefense.  All will be available in the Windows Phone Marketplace from 6 April.

The company has pushed gaming hard as an attraction on WP7, trying to steal some of the casual gaming cachet away from the iPhone. At WP7’s launch, it offered 63 gaming titles. In addition, it is trying to leverage some of the strength of the Xbox brand into the mobile market. The blog mentions that the six new games are “all Xbox Live friendly, featuring achievements, leaderboards and more”.

Separately, Microsoft announced that it has increased the limit on the number of free app submissions developers are allowed from five to 100. The announcement was made in the developer newsletter for the Windows Phone Marketplace. “This should raise the quality of paid but cheap — as in $0.99 apps — while increasing the quantity of free applications in the marketplace,” concludes the Geeksmack blog.