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
Update: The CEO of Rovio, Mikael Hed, has dismissed reports that the company is not developing its latest Angry Birds game for the Windows Phone platform. “We are working towards getting Angry Birds Space to WP7,” he told Reuters. Original post follows below.
Yesterday, the day that Rovio launched its newest game, Angry Birds Space, it also said it has no plans to develop the game for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform. An analyst today has taken that news one step further to suggest that the impact of this decision will be far greater than WP7 users missing out on this one game.
Richard Windsor, a mobile analyst with Nomura, calls Rovio’s decision a “worrying development” for Windows Phone because it suggests a lack of confidence in the future of the platform from a key influencer in the industry. That, he says, will have an inevitable knock-on effect, not just for Microsoft but for its biggest and most crucial platform licensee, Nokia. → 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
I’ve been excited about Angry Birds Space since before I even knew about it. It’s like that awful Savage Garden song: “I think I dreamed it into life.” The only thing is that I didn’t dream it into life; Peter Vesterbacka and his amazing team at Rovio did.
And after getting a sneak peek at the latest and greatest Angry Birds, I can confidently say that this will be the best version to date. → 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
Eat your heart out, Clark Griswold.
This fully interactive Christmas lights display should erase any doubt that Angry Birds is an ubiquitous fixture in pop culture. Rovio’s game was everywhere this year from unofficial Chinese themeparks, to a cookbooks and mooncakes. Rovio’s CMO Peter Vesterbacka’s wife even wore an Angry Birds formal gown to a state gala. But all of those appearances pale in comparison to this interactive holiday lights creation.
The builder clearly found a niche. This isn’t his first go at such a display. He ported Guitar Hero to Christmas lights in 2009, which allowed for real games thanks to the Guitar Hero controller. This time around players use a slingshot-style controller and the cord is even long enough to reach people’s cars where audio is provided over a low-power FM transmitter. But the game is the same. Pull birds back in anger and let them fly at the evil pigs. → Read More
Going to a fancy State Gala? Married to a Rovio executive? Angry Birds dresses are SO IN this season.
If you’ve ever met Rovio CMO Peter Vesterbacka, you’ve probably learned two things: 1) Peter is good people, and 2) he really, really likes his Angry Birds sweatshirt. It’s rare to see him not wearing one. I’m convinced he travels with a suitcase full of them and burns each one after wearing as some sort of sacrifice to the App Store Gods.
Vesterbacka was invited to an event at the Finnfish Presidential Palace, where, alas, the dress code called for something a bit less sweatshirt-y and a bit more tie-and-tailcoat. Fortunately, Peter’s wife Teija found a way to rep the bird: her entire dress. → Read More
Last month, Alexia posted a short manifesto (“Stop Making Apps”), which basically expresses a serious case of app fatigue. It’s something most of us can relate to, at least passingly, in spite of knowing there’s no end to app production in sight. As long as there are downloaders, more apps there will be.
While I encourage developers to continue making great apps, I do question the need for both making and for approving the parade of — for lack of a better word — “rip-off” apps. What am I talking about? Example: Over the last week, I’ve watched another fairly blatant copy of Angry Birds hover inside the “Top Free iPhone Apps” list on the App Store, even grabbing the second spot at one point. → 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
At the Slush 2011 event held today in Finland, Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka revealed a huge milestone for the company’s hit game, Angry Birds—500 million downloads over the past two years. Vesterbacka claims that’s the fastest growing game and most downloads of any game ever.
It’s no secret that the game has been growing fast without any marketing dollars being spent. It looks like Angry Birds has added 100 million downloads in the past two weeks alone. At the Web 2.0 conference in mid-October, Rovio’s North American General Manager Andrew Stalbow said the game had seen 400 million downloads across platforms. At the time, he said the game is currently seeing 130 million monthly users, 30 million daily active users, and 300 million minutes of game play each and every day. → 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
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