Yesterday Rovio announced that it had reached 1 billion downloads of games from its hugely popular Angry Birds franchise — and with it, a little teaser of what might come next from the Finnish developers.
Today the company has confirmed to us some more detail about that, and the clearest sign yet of what it plans for its big follow up. It says that it has bought the IP for the game Casey’s Contraptions — Casey is the guy in the little video clip yesterday, pictured here — from Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut.
The original title developed by Mystery Coconut and Snappy Touch is no longer available. Rovio’s Ville Heijari, VP of franchise development wrote in an email to me that the new title — effectively Rovio’s follow-up to Angry Birds — will come this summer, first on iOS and Android, then “extending to further platforms rapidly after that.”
“Working with [developers] Noel and Miguel has been fantastic, and this is a game that we all fell in love with from the first play,” Heijari wrote in response to my question yesterday about the video. “The gameplay is a perfect fit in our arsenal with its approachable, fun and highly addictive take on the physics puzzler genre.”
He adds that Rovio is currently reworking and rebranding the title, and “getting ready to re-introduce it in a true ‘expect the unexpected’ Rovio-style launch to an even larger audience.”
Rovio has had a huge success with Angry Birds, not only reaching 1 billion downloads across the different titles and platforms, but also increased revenues tenfold to $106.3 million in 2011.