Well, well, well. As if you couldn’t get your fix of sling-shotting irascible fowl on every other mobile and social platform known to man, Rovio announced this morning that Angry Birds for Facebook (officially known as Angry Birds Friends) has finally done flown the coop and left the warm nest of its beta. Avian double-speak aside, what does that mean exactly?
It means that, having gone through the requisite user testing, tweaking, and multi-billion-dollar IPO-ing, Rovio’s Facebook app is ready for public consumption, with a couple of new features in tow. Angry Birds Friends now boasts tournament mode, new weekly levels, a handful of new ways to earn power-ups, and, of course, tons of social integration. → Read More
A little footnote — no, actually, a big footnote — to Rovio’s news earlier this week that revenues had increased by more than tenfold in 2011: the games developer says that its Angry Birds games have now passed the one billion download mark.
Finland-based Rovio notes that this is taking into account the full range of games, including the original Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, and the newest, Angry Birds Space.
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We all know what a wild success the Angry Birds franchise has been for Rovio, with the best-selling mobile games spawning cookbooks, toys and much more besides. Today the company revealed just what kind of an impact that has had on its bottom line for its really Big Year.
The company today issued a statement that noted that the company made $106.3 million (€75.4m) in revenue in 2011, with earnings before tax at $67.6 million (€48m) — with 30 percent of that coming from its merchandising and licensing activities. Monthly active users of the app are now at 200 million, with 648 million games downloaded in total.
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Rovio to Houston. The Mighty Eagle as landed. Big time.
Rovio just took to Twitter to announce that its latest Angry Birds installment, Angry Birds Space, was downloaded 50 million times in 35 days. As the company brags, that makes Angry Birds Space the fastest growing mobile game in history. People clearly cannot get enough of flinging upset birds at moderately evil (or perhaps, misunderstood) pigs. → Read More
We heard from Peter Vesterbacka himself that Angry Birds Space would be Rovio’s biggest launch yet. It’s had crazy success since its launch in March, and in proper Rovio fashion, the company has just released an update to the next level: “Fry Me To The Moon.” But with access to the next level, we also get a glimpse of what the level past that might look like, and guess what!
It looks a helluva lot like Homer Simpson’s favorite donut. → Read More
Rovio has made a killing out of its Angry Birds franchise, and today it announced a deal that points to how the mobile games maker is hard at work developing what could well be the follow up to that: it has bought Futuremark Games Studio, the gaming arm of software developer Futuremark.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The team behind Futuremark Games Studio, based in Finland like Rovio, are all coming over in the deal. Games the developer has made include Unstoppable Gorg and Hungribles, as well as Shattered Horizon — which, like Angry Birds Space, plays with the zero gravity concept. → Read More
The Mighty Eagle has landed! Released late last week, the latest edition of Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise was downloaded 10 million times in its first three days. Unfortunately since the announcement came by way of a tweet, it doesn’t include detailed data concerning platform penetration or the number of people who paid $.99 for the extra levels (I did). But 10 million in three days! → Read More
Bird-lovers and pig-haters, today is your lucky day: Rovio has finally pushed the button on the launch of its newest installation of its hugely successful Angry Birds franchise: Angry Birds Space.
The game — which Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka told us last week will be its biggest launch yet — is marked by new characters, a new physics engine and a whole new setting that will take the familiar concept of catapulting birds to destroy pig houses to a whole new frontier. → Read More
Curious how Rovio planned on dealing with physics in the forthcoming Angry Birds Space? I have been, too. If we presume that Rovio is playing by the physical laws of space, a lack of gravity fundamentally changes the game. But apparently, that’s the point.
Rovio took us to the international space station, courtesy of the video below of course, to show us a little bit about how the new version of the game will work. An astronaut, Don Pettit, did a little demo flinging a plush red bird in a zero gravity environment. It should go without saying, but that little red bird flew straighter than an arrow through the space station.
“We’re seeing all of this in a weightless environment, which is what Angry Birds Space will look like, with gravitational fields from planetary bodies,” said Pettit. → Read More
I’m not even going to pretend that you don’t know what Angry Birds is… that would be insulting to both you and the game. But do you know what Angry Birds Space is? Nah, I didn’t think so. And truth be told, I’m not quite sure what it is either.
According to Rovio, Angry Birds Space will be the biggest launch for the company to date. Remember what a big deal Angry Birds Rio was with that whole 20th Century Fox partnership and a movie and all that jazz? Well guess what! Space is even bigger. → Read More
Angry Birds has just launched on Facebook, and developer Rovio is trying out a different business model that flocks together with other freemium games on the social network. Rather than make you pay $1 up front for a mobile download, there’s 4 new powerups that you can buy for cheap – just $1 for 20 uses.
By expanding its in-app purchases beyond the level-beating Mighty Eagle, Rovio could earn higher a higher average lifetime revenue per user for itself and Facebook rather than squeezing a single golden egg from players upon install. → Read More
The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.
For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App (Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline, the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0), the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like Task Rabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.
In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can. → Read More
Ready for this week’s tale of someone turning down an absurd mountain of money in exchange for their company?
According to a report by the New York Times, Rovio — makers of the Angry Birds series (and the accompanying heap of Angry Birds merchandise so plentiful that they’ve started opening up retail stores) — turned down $2.25 billion this past summer. The would-be buyer? Zynga. → Read More
With Angry Birds, Rovio found a way to transform normal, healthy people into raging bird-flinging addicts. This isn’t really that big of a deal — at least not in most cases — unless some shady app developers begin impersonating Rovio and selling fake apps on the Android Market.
Did I mention that some shady app developers have started impersonating Rovio and selling fake apps on the Android Market? → Read More
In a little over two years of existence, the smartphone game Angry Birds is now a household name. A lesson in horizontal brand extension, Rovio “Mighty Eagle” Peter Vesterbacka wore an Angry Birds sweater and carried around a bouquet of Angry Birds mylar ballons, on not just one, but all days of the TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing conference.
He is in China because the sprawling country is Rovio’s second biggest and fastest growing market, and Vesterbacka is attacking it full force; opening an office in Shanghai and Angry Birds retail stores in the country shortly. The game itself has had over 50 million downloads in China, and Vesterbacka hopes to hit 100 million by the end of the year. “We want to be the leading Chinese entertainment brand,” he says. → Read More
As proven by the massive success of the Angry Birds plush line, the world has a hungry for real-world Angry Birds wares. No where is that more apparent than Beijing, where the halls of countless toy shops and electronics stores are filled foot to ceiling with sundry Bird-themed goods, from sweatshirts and jeans to candy and balloons. The catch? Rovio didn’t authorize any of it.
Where others may see a problem, Rovio Mobile’s Mighty Eagle (read: CMO) Peter Versterbacka sees opportunity. He roams these aforementioned shops in search of unauthorized goods — but not to complain or throw around legal orders. He’s there to find the best unofficial Angry Birds items… so he can copy them. → Read More
Well, Rovio doesn’t need much of an introduction: It’s the company behind the now ubiquitous game that features everybody’s favorite affronted and chafed birds. Back in September, a whopping month and a half ago, Rovio’s North American General Manager Andrew Stalbow revealed some brand growth stats at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, peeling back the curtain a bit.
As a testament to how quickly Rovio is growing, thanks to Angry Birds, today at Web 2.0 Stalbow was back on stage, firing off some stats that give us a fresh glimpse into recent growth. At Disrupt, Stalbow said that Angry Birds had pulled in 350 million cumulative downloads across platforms (and was selling 1 million t-shirts and plush toys a month, god help us); and today, Angry Birds is already grown to 400 million cumulative downloads. Not bad for a month of angry squawking. → Read More
If you at all thought that the Angry Birds phenomenon was fizzling out… well, you were wrong. Rovio itself is doing plenty to make the brand “as iconic as Nintendo’s Mario or Mickey Mouse,” with cookbooks and new games and plush toys galore.
But even outside of the company, Angry Birds is still a hit. Over in China, the Shenzhen Technology Co. built a tablet specifically for Angry Birds fiends: the Wopad V7+. → Read More
I caught up with Peter Vesterbacka, Mighty Eagle at Rovio, the creators of the successful Angry Birds franchise, yesterday at the Planet Of The Apps conference in London.
It wasn’t a huge secret, but I certainly didn’t know this: Vesterbacka tells me you will soon be able to buy Angry Birds-themed cookbooks; actual physical books and ebooks for Kindle, Nook and iPad. → Read More
Given that I don’t even really need to write an introduction for it, it goes without saying that Angry Birds is a massive, massive brand. It’s available for everything from iOS to the PS3, and just recently smashed through 350 million cumulative downloads.
The Angry Birds brand isn’t all about the software, though, by any means. In a Fireside Chat with MG this morning, Rovio’s North American General Manager Andrew Stalbow revealed a few key details surrounding the sales of their real world goods. → Read More
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