Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Angry Birds is still big business but Rovio thinks its time for new IP

By
rovio
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Rovio went from a small, but surviving mobile game developer in Finland to one of the most valuable independent studios in the entire video game industry over the past three years and it’s all thanks to a bunch of creepy little birds and pigs. Angry Birds started as a popular iPhone game and ballooned into a global brand spawning not just myriad video game spinoffs, but toy lines and even theme parks. Rovio’s not getting out of the Angry Birds business any time soon, but the company has said that it plans to focus on new intellectual properties going forward.

“We have a huge amount of incredibly great Angry Birds things lined up for the future,” Rovio executive vice president Petri Jarvilehto told Edge Magazine in a recent interview, “But at the same time, we feel that the time is pretty much right to introduce new IPs and keep pushing into other directions as well. We are certainly targeting much bigger games. We’ve managed to achieve some pretty awesome things, and at the same time we feel like we need to push this to the next level.”

Recommended Videos

Easier said than done. Rovio successfully broadened the Angry Birds empire earlier this year by releasing the spinoff game Bad Piggies, but its one attempt at starting up a wholly new franchise was a failure. Rovio released Amazing Alex in July, and while the game hit the top spot on the iOS App Store’s best-selling apps list within eight hours of release, it trailed off badly afterwards. Amazing Alex was the 99th top-grossing app in the iOS store three weeks after release, and it’s trailed off even further since. It’s currently the 228th top-selling paid app in the US App Store according to App Data.

That isn’t bad for your average mobile developer, but for the company behind Angry Birds, it’s not exactly par. Then again, Amazing Alex wasn’t exactly a Rovio original either. The game is actually a rebranding of the game Casey’s Contraptions, developed by Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut, which Rovio purchased the rights for in May 2012. Rovio hasn’t developed its own original intellectual property since making its line of Bounce titles for Nokia’s line of phones in 2008.

The Angry Birds business is just getting bigger. Rovio announced just last week that it’s creating an Angry Birds movie for release in 2016. Whether or not the brand can survive without being bolstered by a second success is a question the Finnish studio needs an answer for soon.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Anthony John Agnello
Anthony John Agnello
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…
Samsung’s new cloud service lets you play games without downloading them
A computer generated image of a Samsung phone with a gaming hub logo on it. It's surrounded by floating game iconography, like a controller, a die, and a car.

Samsung has a new way for Galaxy users to play games. The device manufacturer has been working on getting into the gaming space for a couple years, and its latest venture is a free mobile gaming platform that'll let you stream Android games through the cloud on a Galaxy device.

The program entered beta last year in the Gaming Hub, and is now available to the public. There will be 23 games available at launch, including Monopoly Go, Candy Crush Saga, and Honor of Kings. 

Read more
The best gacha games in 2024
Wuthering Waves character illustrations.

Whether you're familiar with or completely new to gacha games, there's a wide variety of options to choose from. From sci-fi to fantas, and even dress-up games, gacha appeals to a wide audience, and you're sure to find the right game for your taste.

But what does 2024 have to offer? While some of the best gacha titles have just been released this year, others are older and still widely popular. If you're looking for the best gacha game to get into, you should find what you're looking for in the list below.

Read more
How to stealth kill in Stalker 2
Key art for Stalker 2. A character in a lit-up gas mask and a gun on their back.

It won't take long before The Zone teaches you one very important tip for surviving in Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, which is to avoid fighting whenever possible. You can only carry so many resources, and prolonged fights can leave you with almost nothing left. And that's if you even manage to survive. There are some fights you just can't get around, though, but going in guns blazing isn't the best strategy. There's a handy stealth kill mechanic in Stalker 2, but you won't find it in any of the tutorials.
How to stealth kill in Stalker 2

You have the ability to stealth kill right off the bat, though it is not something the game will ever explain or tell you. It works how you would think, but is tricky enough to pull off that you might not think it's possible even if you try the right thing.

Read more