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Angry Birds Trilogy flutters to Wii / Wii U in celebration of one million sold
The Angry Birds and the pigs they hate so are already quite popular on mobile devices, but it turns out that the collected escapades for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo 3DS in Angry Birds Trilogy also did quite well, pushing past one million units since September 2012. Its console success is apparently enough for its Finnish progenitor, Rovio, to release the game for both Nintendo's original Wii and the more recent Wii U at some point in 2013. The trilogy collects the first Angry Birds game with Seasons and Rio for "700+ levels." It stands to reason that the Wii U version will take advantage of the system's tablet-esque GamePad, but we'll have to wait on Rovio for more info as the year goes on.
Angry Birds Rio free for a limited time on iPhone and iPad
If there's one thing that could draw a bit of attention away from yesterday's surprise launch of Temple Run 2, it's a can't-miss deal on an Angry Birds game. In this case, it's news that both the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad versions of Angry Birds Rio -- the mash-up of Rovio's hit fowl-flinging title and Fox's 2011 CG-animated flick Rio -- are now free as the App Store's App of the Week promotion. They're normally US$0.99 and $2.99, respectively. Angry Birds Rio deviates from the core series a bit by seeing you saving animals from cages, rather than bringing architecture down on top of evil pigs. It also boasts a power-up system to make things a little more interesting via abilities such as laser targeting and super-sized birds. The free offer's only for a week, so get the game while it's hot -- or end up angry.
Here's a look at the whole universe of Angry Birds games (so far)
Bad Piggies is the latest title added to Rovio's growing universe of Angry Birds games, and the latest word is that it's the fastest-selling game in the company's history, hitting number one on the App Store just a few hours after it launched. Given all of the various Angry Birds properties that have hit the App Store (and elsewhere), you might not have heard about everything Angry Birds out there. But worry not -- we've put together a quick guide here to the entire universe of Angry Birds. Here's a list of every single Angry Birds game Rovio has released so far, from the first title released back in December of 2009, all the way up until Bad Piggies' release about a week ago. Keep in mind that we're just talking about the games here -- this list doesn't include the countless bits and bobs of Angry Birds merchandise out there, and other partnerships like the upcoming Angry Birds TV show and maybe even a movie. Angry Birds (December 11, 2009): This is Rovio's original hit and its first iOS title (published by Chillingo, which is now part of EA) after a string of uninteresting J2ME releases and games for Nokia's N-Gage phone console. Since its original iOS release, the first version of Angry Birds has also shown up on a number of other mobile operating systems, including Android (as a freemium title), Windows Phone, Blackberry Tablet OS and Symbian. The original game has also seen about nine different free updates, as well as a number of promotional add-ons and content as well. Angry Birds HD (April 2, 2010): The iPad version of the game arrived about six months after the iPhone version, just as the first iPad appeared. The game wasn't fundamentally different, but the larger screen made for a larger audience, and the higher price point ($4.99) definitely made Rovio more money. The standard and HD games also got free versions at some point as well, with eight mini-episodes released for free. Angry Birds Seasons (October 21, 2010): Rovio introduced this first official spinoff just under a year after the original launch, featuring tons of new levels, and a regular holiday-based structure for updates (an HD version was released right around the same time). The game originally started out as Angry Birds Halloween, but as more holidays came around, it was updated to its current "Seasons" status. There have been 13 different updates to the game so far, with the latest being a "Back to School" update back in August of 2012. Angry Birds Magic (October 2010): This game, also called "Angry Birds in Florida" in some places, was made specifically for Nokia's NFC (near field communication) smartphones, and had a feature where when two smartphones with the game installed on them came near each other, different levels would be unlocked. The title was announced to great fanfare at a Nokia conference in mid-2010, and presumably it released on the smartphones later that year, though since we're all iPhone owners here, we have no idea how it turned out. Angry Birds Rio (March 22, 2011): This version of the game was created in conjunction with the animated movie Rio and featured a Rovio-built storyline that had the movie's birds crossing paths with the Angry ones. It premiered on the movie's release date with two sets of levels, and a series of updates provided more and more levels to go along with the film's storyline. This is arguably the least popular version of Angry Birds, although there's no doubt that both the game and the movie benefited from the shared marketing. And given that there's an Angry Birds TV show on the way, Hollywood paid close attention to this release. Angry Birds Chrome (May 11, 2011): Rovio designed a special browser-based version of the game for Google's Chrome browser, completely free to play and supported by in-app purchases. The game featured "Chrome bombs" which were special items that players had to find and hit with the frustrated fowl, in order to unlock "Chrome dimension" levels. Angry Birds Space (March 22, 2012): This game was billed as a full Angry Birds sequel, with all new levels and new gravity-based gameplay, as the birds were tossed off of actual planets and out into the upper reaches of space. But since the app's release, Rovio has spun it more as just another part of the current universe, with new twists on the game's tried-and-true method of throwing birds into pigs. Space spawned both HD and free versions on the App Store as well, and has been ported off to Android, Windows and Mac. Angry Birds Friends (May 23, 2012): Angry Birds Friends is the Facebook version of the game, which has been running online for a while now. The game features weekly tournaments and lots of competition between Facebookers and their friends. (There are also a number of other browser-based versions of the game that have been live at different times over the years, including promotions with Samsung, Formula 1 racing driver Heikki Kovalainen, Wonderful Pistachios, Pepsi, Fuji TV and a Finnish candy company. These games have all featured new levels and themed content, but have been live only during certain promotional times.) Angry Birds Trilogy (September 25, 2012): Rovio teamed up just a little while ago with console publisher Activision to bring the content from Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio to consoles as a downloadable title, including the Nintendo 3DS, the Xbox 360 (with Kinect integration) and the PlayStation 3. Sales only just started, so we'll have to wait and see how Rovio's birds do in the larger traditional gaming market after they have dominated so much in the mobile markets. Bad Piggies (September 27, 2012): Which brings us back to Bad Piggies, Rovio's current hit, and the first game in the series that is build around the Pigs, specifically the task of building them vehicles to try and find a map to the birds' eggs. There will likely be a whole slew of updates for this title as well, and then ... who knows? Rovio has certainly grown its Angry Birds franchise by capitalizing on the initial game, so as big as this universe is already, there's no doubt that the company still has lots of other ideas on how to make it even bigger.
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.
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.
20th Century Fox talks about the success of Angry Birds Rio
I attended an event called the LA AppShow last night here in Santa Monica, CA, and I saw seven demos of various apps that are seeing significant success on the App Store. Matt McMahon from 20th Century Fox was there, and while his company didn't publish the actual app in question, he's certainly seen plenty of success; he worked closely with Rovio on the creation of Angry Birds Rio, the movie tie-in that has nabbed 20 million downloads on the App Store in just 20 days of release, and has helped send the Rio animated movie to number one at the box office. McMahon didn't talk about the actual development of Angry Birds Rio -- most of the technical work was left to Rovio, who McMahon called the "best in breed" on the App Store. But McMahon and his company did make an interesting decision, and that was to pin a large arm of their marketing for a huge movie on a little company from Finland with a popular app about birds and pigs.
AT&T planning access to Amazon Appstore, sideloading still an open question
Angry Birds developer Rovio announced on its Facebook account a few hours ago that "AT&T is also working on enabling purchases from the Amazon Appstore soon," which would mark a pretty big move on AT&T's part since they've been firm in their resolve to keep apps from outside the Android Market ecosystem off their branded Android devices -- a frustrating (and arguably illogical) stance, to say the least. Well, first the good news -- AT&T has confirmed to us that they are, in fact, setting up access to Amazon's store: "We're working to give our Android customers access to third party application stores. This requires updates to our systems and finalizing arrangements with Amazon. We will share more info with our customers in the near future." The bad news is that AT&T's having any discussions with Amazon about this at all, which would seem to indicate that they're planning on making an exception to their Android Market policy for the Amazon Appstore rather than simply enabling sideloading on devices altogether and calling it a day. We suppose this could involve a round of firmware updates that drops the Appstore in ROM, but that seems like an awful lot of work considering how much red tape is involved in pushing even a single update for one handset on a major carrier. More on this as we get it; hopefully, AT&T subscribers will have their Angry Birds Rio fix soon enough. [Thanks, Thomas]
Angry Birds Rio out now on iPhone, iPad, Mac
The movie tie-in game for Angry Birds, called Angry Birds Rio, is now available on the iOS App Store for 99 cents on iPhone and $2.99 on the iPad; it's $4.99 on the Mac App Store. The game features 60 new levels of the popular bird-throwing game and stars two characters from the upcoming movie Rio. It features full Game Center integration with all new achievements and boasts "a spectacular boss fight" of some kind. In short, if you like Angry Birds, you'll enjoy this one as well. The game unfortunately does contain those ads that had some feathers ruffled in the original version, but the ratings on iTunes haven't suffered very much. And the description on the iOS store does promise updates "throughout 2011," so there's more content to come. In case you don't want to spend the buck just yet, there are also free versions for both platforms that have six levels to check out. But it's Angry Birds -- while it looks from the screenshot like you're busting birds out of cages rather than attacking pigs, the catapult physics gameplay is still the main focus.
Amazon Appstore for Android goes live, welcomes newcomers with free Angry Birds Rio
In spite of Apple's grumbling, Amazon's proceeding full steam ahead with the rollout of its Appstore for Android. The switch has just been flipped and early adopters will be welcomed with a free copy of Angry Birds Rio, whose Android launch Amazon scooped all to itself. Beyond day one, Rio will be a $0.99 app, but others will take its place as the online retailer is aiming to serve one usually-paid app for free each day. A total of around 3,800 applications are available at launch and you'll be able to get on board via either a dedicated Appstore app on Android (sideload link available below) or Amazon's web interface. The latter offers you a 30-minute Test Drive facility, where you can try out a program you might fancy for your phone before purchasing. Service looks to be US-only for now -- sorry, international users. Update: The web Appstore has gone down. Don't panic, we're sure it's just teething troubles and not a smiting by the Cupertino ninja collective. In the mean time, the app still looks to be working okay.
Angry Birds Rio will be exclusive to Amazon Appstore on Android launch
Think you'll be heading to the Android Market to get your next fix of Rovio Mobile's insanely popular Angry Birds? Think again. The next installment in the aviary vengeance saga, Angry Birds Rio, will launch exclusively on Amazon's upcoming Appstore for Android. That does sound like it will eventually achieve universal distribution via the Market, but in the interim Amazon has scored a pretty big scoop in its efforts to attract users to its own app repository. We're also promised the Appstore is launching "very soon" and Amazon has just inaugurated an @amazonappstore account on Twitter to keep us abreast of when precisely that will happen.
GDC 2011: Building the Angry Birds franchise
Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka hosted an entertaining panel on the first day of the 2011 Game Developers Conference here in San Francisco. Rovio's app, Angry Birds, is the runaway hit of Apple's iOS platform, signifying both the potential reach of iOS games and the chance for indie mobile developers to create gigantic hits. Vesterbacka, speaking in his Finnish accent, was almost arrogant at times during his talk, saying that after last year's GDC, Rovio is "a bit more popular now for some reason," and that while people laughed at his predictions of 100 million downloads for the game across all the platforms, Rovio is basically there. But he was also informative and helpful, and he thanked Apple multiple times during the talk. Rovio's made 52 different mobile games so far, and Vesterbacka credited Apple for changing the tempo around the mobile games market. Before Apple, mobile carriers held all of the power, and carriers both a) wanted a lot of games for their specific platforms, and b) didn't care about the quality. Vesterbacka joked about pitching Angry Birds to a carrier before the App Store: "It's a game where you slingshot birds at three pigs," he said, and then he mimicked the reply to the crowd's laughter: "It's not a poker game? Not interested."
