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Angry Birds Friends featuring Green Day as green pigs
Desperately avoiding the use of the words "dookie" or "american idiot," Angry Birds developer Rovio announced a new Angry Birds Friends this morning featuring the band Green Day. Angry Birds Friends is the free Facebook version of the fowl franchise. The episode contains 10 new levels, with the members of band reimagined as some bad pigs (allegory goes here).The crossover also includes Green Day's latest single "Oh Love," as well as "exclusive song 'Troublemaker.'" There's more Green Day episodes of Angry Birds Friends coming this fall.Now if we could only get a Rihanna version of Angry Birds Friends with Chris Brown as all the pigs.
Green Day make cameo in Angry Birds Facebook offering as mascara-wearing egg thieves
Punk's not dead, it's just diversifying its portfolio. Having already conquered Broadway, East Bay pop-punkers Green Day are hitting the world of casual gaming with a new episode of Facebook's Angry Birds Friends that features pig opponents "inspired by band members Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool." The offering also features "Troublemaker," an exclusive song that is most likely a tribute to the hard living ways of porcine egg thieves. Asked to justify his pro-swine stance, Pinhead Gunpowder member Armstrong answered, "We're all fans of Angry Birds. It's such an addictive game that when we first started playing it we couldn't stop. Go Team Green!"
Angry Birds Seasons' new 'Pink Bird' is multifaceted
By which we mean she's not angry all the time. Instead, the new Pink Bird is a happy-go-lucky, bubble-blowing character who only embodies the Angry Birds stereotype when presented with scheming pigs.The new character was introduced in a charming cartoon (above), advertising a "Back to School" update for Angry Birds Seasons. We're curious about how a bird who blows bubbles will work in the normal "bird tossing" gameplay. Maybe she can just distract herself with bubbles while she's being slingshotted into a stone wall.
The best way to play Angry Birds is with this custom USB controller
While Angry Birds is mostly "been there, done that" at this point in time, we've got to give it up to the setup seen above. The custom "Super Angry Birds" controller above is a complicated USB mod using wood and gyros. Hacks were definitely involved.You adjust trajectory using the wooden sling, then pull back on the plastic bird to adjust power and let 'er rip. Simple. And if you're wondering how this setup handles those birds with special abilities, you only need watch the above video for 20 seconds or so. That neat little TNT box gets the job done!
Super Angry Birds USB controller puts the sling back in your shot (video)
Yeah. We know. There are pretty much as many ways to play Angry Birds, as there are people who play it. That's a lot. However, the Super Angry Birds controller you see above speaks to us. Why? Because it's not just a sling shot, or a fudged use of existing technology. That wooden "sling" hides one of those motorized faders you see in big music studio desks. Using some coding magic (i.e. a force curve stored in a table), the creators were able to give it a realistic resistance feeling, sans elastic. The rest of the hardware is programmed in Max / MSP and Arduino, with a "Music and Motors" microcontroller. It's not just the sling part, either, with angle and special power triggering available from the same device. A pretty neat solution, we think. Now, we wonder if we could scale this thing up?
Switched On: For OUYA, it's game on
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. In discussing the varied routes Android has taken to the television, Switched On recently touched on OUYA, the cuboid game console that will run Android games. The project has surpassed the $5.5 million mark on Kickstarter and once seemed poised to pass the Pebble smartwatch's record for overall funds collected just like it broke the record for funds collected in the first day.
Angry Birds with gesture controls collides with select Samsung Smart TVs
We first caught wind of Angry Birds' impending arrival on Samsung Smart TVs earlier this month, and now the war against pigs is available as a free download on some of the company's silver screens. Thanks to a built-in camera and the firm's Smart Interaction tech, which typically help users navigate menus and browse the web, gamers can smash through swine defenses using gesture controls. In order to download the app from the Samsung Smart Hub, you'll need a television in the Plasma 8000 range or a 2012 LED 7500 or higher. If your TV's not as intelligent as Samsung would like, however, the avian protagonists can already stage their skirmishes on your tube with a Roku, and come this holiday season, they'll be soaring on the Xbox 360 and PS3.
PSA: Download Angry Birds on your expensive new TV today
For those of you who were unable to resist the siren's song of a TV with built-in motion controlled Angry Birds, or for those of you who bought a Samsung Smart TV for other, more valid reasons, good news: Rovio's avian aviation simulator is now available as a free download for eligible televisions.Specifically, if you've purchased a Samsung LED 7500 (or higher) model TV or something in the Plamsa 8000 range, Angry Birds should be available for download in your television's Samsung 'Smart Hub.' Also, we'd like to borrow some of your apparently overflowing wealth. We're good for it, we promise.
Apple fixing in-app purchasing hack
Apple has given some developers access to its private APIs in order to plug an in-app purchasing exploit. The Guardian reports the action was required due to a Russian hacker who enabled 8.4 million fake in-app purchases. Over 115 games were affected, including all the big iOS dogs like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Infinity Blade and Plants vs Zombies HD.The fix will check whether in-app downloads were valid, while faked purchases will be wiped from the device. However, consumers who used the exploit will need to update their apps to shut themselves out. The hacker who promoted the exploit, Alexey Borodin, is now attempting similar tricks on Apple's Newsstand and OSX. The Guardian goes into greater detail on how Borodin spoofed the system. Apple says the hack will be fixed by iOS 6 this fall. [Mkabakov via Shutterstock]
Samsung Smart TVs are now the most expensive way to play Angry Birds
We can't really think of an honest reason why Rovio wouldn't port Angry Birds to something even halfway capable of supporting the game, so excuse us for not being completely surprised by hearing that the now-iconic mobile title has been ported to Samsung's latest line of "Smart" televisions, which support gesture-based input.Similar to the forthcoming Kinect and Move-enabled versions, the Smart TV release of Angry Birds has the player controlling the slingshot's aim and tension via gesture commands. Unlike those versions, however, the Smart TV release requires ... a Smart TV, which costs about two thousand dollars. We can't really recommend buying one specifically for Angry Birds, but if you're going to get one anyway, you may as well drastically under-utilize it with a port of a phone game.
Angry Birds land on Samsung Smart TVs, wage war with gestures
If your contempt for green swine runs deeper then you can express on a smartphone, maybe its time you took the war to something bigger. How about a Samsung Smart TV? According to the firm's Flickr page, Rovio's Angry Birds are once again taking their war to your living room, and will be utilizing the platform's motion control features. Sounds like Sammy's Smart Interaction setup is good for a bit more than changing channels and browsing the web from your couch. Don't own a Smart TV? Sit tight, your Xbox and its fancy Kinect sensor will have their day on the battlefield soon enough.
Pigs beware: Angry Birds Trilogy coming to 3DS, PS3 and Xbox 360 later this year
Despite already being a massive success story on the Android and iOS platforms, Rovio's clearly not planning on slowing down its Angry Birds adventure any time soon. Speaking to IGN earlier today, the company's Executive Vice President of Games, Petri Järvilehto, told the site that the Angry Birds Trilogy is headed -- in physical form, no less -- to the 3DS, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 later this holiday season. Sadly, Järvilehto didn't say how much we'll have to spend on the bird-slinging trilogy, or when exactly it'll be available at retail shops -- though he did say you should "think of the game as the ultimate collector's edition." The Trilogy's set to include the original Angry Birds title, Seasons and Rio, with the set expected to offer support for Kinect, Move and StreetPass on Nintendo's three-dimensional handheld.
Angry Birds Trilogy goes retail on 3DS, Xbox 360 and PS3
You can buy Angry Birds plushes, t-shirts, fruit snacks, board games, and dozens of other items at stores, but until this holiday the one thing you couldn't get in a box was the actual game. Now, Rovio has announced the Angry Birds Trilogy, a collection of Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio, on a PS3 or Xbox 360 disc or 3DS cartridge, for release this holiday season."You can think of the game as the ultimate collector's edition," Rovio EVP of Games Petri Järvilehto told IGN. "There are new cinematics, extras and other entertaining content. In addition all of the existing material has been uprezzed and re-treated for the high-resolution and big screen." New "reactive" backgrounds take advantage of the fact that you're playing on a screen big enough to see backgrounds.The upgrades also feature Kinect and Move capability, as well as StreetPass functionality on 3DS. Most importantly, they support the "being able to be bought and given as holiday gifts" functionality that Rovio has lacked so far.
Angry Birds Heikki: because F1 and fort-breaking games are like peanut butter and chocolate
We've seen Angry Birds go into strange places both figurative and literal, but Formula 1 racing? That's a less natural mix than a peanut butter cup. As a way of backing race driver and fellow Finland native Heikki Kovalainen, Rovio has crafted Angry Birds Heikki, a free web game themed all around its namesake's escapades during the F1 race year. The gameplay changes are more cosmetic than functional, although that leaderboard matters a little more in spirit than it might otherwise. Perhaps the biggest draw is simply that your gameplay schedule is intrinsically linked to Heikki's: new sections only unlock as the real-world races get near, so you'll have an incentive to keep coming back until the Sao Paulo race determines the F1 championship on November 21st. Let's just hope that there aren't too many road hogs spoiling either Heikki's fun or our own. [Thanks, Rodrigo]
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says 'no thanks' to console gaming, isn't worried about a life detached from Facebook
Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus just took the stage here at D10, and in a wide-ranging interview with Kara Swisher, he sidestepped conversation about Words With Friends and Farmville long enough to touch on the murky world of console gaming. In a bid to quell any potential surprises at E3 next month, Mark said outrightly that his company is not interested in getting into the console world. "We're aiming for you," he said while pointing at Swisher. "We're going after the mainstream market. There's too much friction [in the console world]." He also made clear that he tries to not look too far ahead of where the world really is. When talking about the undeniable shift to mobile, he made clear that there's still a huge amount of desktop traffic on Zynga's games -- "lots of people play while bored on conference calls at work," he quipped. It's an interesting viewpoint in a world where PSN and Xbox Live Arcade has given independent developers all new distribution platforms to reach users, but it also highlights the outfit's intrinsic attachment to Facebook in particular.
Angry Birds and PES 2012 join Skype: won't work on Windows Phones with 256MB RAM (updated)
Putting the squeeze on those hardware specifications has lead to several more app casualties on Microsoft's ever-growing mobile platform. Unfortunately, it includes one of mobile gaming's biggest hitters: Angry Birds. We gave installation a go on our own Lumia 610 and were met with the unfortunate message seen above. According to WindowsPhoneApps Spanish, it's not the only one affected by the reduction in RAM on these lower-priced smartphones. PES 2012 won't run on the lower-specced smartphone, while videocall app Tango also joins its rival Skype on the no-go list. Update: Nokia's confirmed that Rovio is, indeed, working on an optimized version of Angry Birds for the Lumia 610, though an exact release date is still up in the air.
Angry Birds devs reveal next game: Amazing Alex
Hot on the heels of its big franchise's 1 billionth download, Angry Birds developer Rovio is introducing its next title: "Amazing Alex." Rovio head Mikael Hed told Finnish television about the game, revealing it to be based on the recently acquired "Casey's Contraptions" property, previously owned by Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut.The only information about Amazing Alex thus far identifies it as part education tool, part game, featuring a boy named – you guessed it – Alex, "who loves to build." If we're going by what we've seen in Casey's Contraptions, Amazing Alex will create Rube Goldberg-esque machines to complete a variety of objectives. Take a look for yourself (at Casey's Contraptions) just below the break.Hed told the Finnish station that "quality pressure is high" internally for Rovio's next project, especially in light of recent Angry Birds milestones. "We want to maintain the high standard Angry Birds fans have come to enjoy." Platforms and a release date for Amazing Alex are currently unknown.[Image above is of Casey's Contraptions, not Amazing Alex.]
Angry Birds downloaded a billion times
The Angry Birds franchise has hurtled past a billion downloads. The number covers free and paid downloads of Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Space. The news comes a couple days after Rovio revealed revenues of $106.3 million in 2011, with approximately $67.6 million in pre-tax profit.There's one curiosity in today's video announcing the milestone: the closing moments highlight physics-based Rube Goldberg puzzler Casey's Contraptions. As Gamasutra notes, Rovio has not officially purchased Snappy Touch or Mystery Coconut, the developers of the game. The connection between Rovio and the Casey's Contraptions team is currently unclear.
Rovio marks one billion downloads, untold pig casualties across Angry Birds games
Yeah, yeah, we all knew that Rovio was doing gangbusters with Angry Birds series, but here's a little number to put it all into perspective: one billion. That's how many times the slingshotting birds have been downloaded, when you add up all of the titles and all of the platforms. Naturally, the company made a video to celebrate the accomplishment. You can find it after the break. [Image credit (McDonald's Sign): Alexis Bea / Flickr]
Rovio makes a Mighty Eagle's $68 million in profit in financial squawk
Rovio has announced that in 2011, it made a huge $106.3 million turnover and a whopping $67.6 million in profit (before tax), showing that flinging feathery fowl is a very serious business. Fueled by the success of Angry Birds, Seasons and Rio, the company grew by a factor of eight in the last year, from 28 employees all the way to 224. The company adds that the three games were downloaded 648 million times and are now used by 200 million daily users, while sales of merchandise contributed to around 30 percent of the total revenue. The report adds that the only barrier to future profits is if people stop buying new smartphones, but we're not sure that's likely to be the case for a while.
