Items tagged with Rovio
In an attempt to create a "leaner and more agile" company, Angry Birds developer Rovio is planning to fling pink slips at up to 260 employees, the Finnish firm announced on Wednesday. The planned reduction represents more than a third of Rovio's staff and comes hot the heels of Angry Birds 2, which was downloaded nearly 50 million times in its first month of release. Unfortunately for Rovio and its employees, downloads alone don't generate revenue, at least for freemium titles. It's the in-app purchases that count, and while Rovio didn't disclose how much it's collected from its newest Angry Birds title, the company is struggling financially. In 2014, Rovio's revenue dipped 9 percent to 158 million...
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If you thought the Angry Birds franchise had soared as high as it could possibly go and there would be limited interest in yet another release, you thought wrong. Angry Birds 2, the first official sequel to the original Angry Birds title released in 2009, notched 1 million downloads in just 12 hours, and 10 million downloads in three days.That's a far cry from the 920 million downloads the original Angry Birds has tallied to date, though it represents another fast start for yet another Angry Birds title, of which there have been several. While Angry Birds 2 is an official sequel to the original, there have been a bunch of spinoffs, like Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Transformers.Ten million...
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Want to hear something slightly shocking and downright fowl? Today marks the fifth anniversary of Angry Birds, the mobile game that brought Rovio to fame and stole hours of your life in the process. It's hard to believe it's been five years already, during which time Rovio has shoveled out a dozen Angry Bird iterations. And as gamers, we've collectively flung over 600 billion (with a "B!") birds to date. We're just getting started with the stats. Those 600 billion birds break down to 85 for every person on the planet. In addition, Angry Birds has amassed 2.5 billion downloads to 1.7 billion smartphone users around the world. Even Dr. Evil would be impressed with all these billions! For our fowl...
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Rovio Entertainment is following through with its plan to make significant workforce reductions this year. The cuts, which Rovio first announced in early October, will remove 110 employees. As part of the reorganization, the Angry Birds game developer is closing its Tampere, Finland studio and moving many positions to Espoo, Finland. The cuts come as Rovio is promoting its upcoming Angry Birds movie, which is expected to hit theaters in July. Image Credit: RovioInitially, Rovio planned to cut 130 employees, which would have amounted to about 16% of its 800-person worldwide workforce. After negotiations with its employees, Rovio has reduced that number to 110 job cuts,...
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If you're a fan of iconic mash-ups, you'll be interested to know that Angry Birds and Transformers have put in a blender, mixed, and poured into iTunes where you can download Rovio's new Angry Birds Transformers mobile game for your iOS device. Prefer Android? Rovio's planning to release an Android version on Google Play on October 30th and on Amazon on November 4th. The 1980s vibe is alive and well in the new game, especially the whacky trailers promoting the game. From the old-style cartoon music to the dated visuals, the trailers will take you back in time to when Saturday morning cartoons were still worth watching. As for the game itself, the play mechanics stray from traditional Angry Birds...
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It's tough to fathom that Rovio could be in any kind of financial bind that would cause the company to hand out pink slips as a cost cutting measure, let alone layoff up to 130 employees, or 16 percent of its workforce. After all, this is the company responsible for the wildly popular Angry Birds franchise, which has been massively successful. Yet profits are down, so the decision's been made as Rovio looks to spur growth within the company. We have been building our team on assumptions of faster growth than have materialized. As a result, we announced today that we plan to simplify our organization around our three key businesses with the highest growth potential: games, media, and consumer...
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Now that Flappy Bird has flown the coop, Rovio thought it was high time the casual gaming crowd had a new Angry Birds title to play with, but the question isn't, "Where will it take place," but "When?" The answer is medieval times, or so it appears from a new teaser trailer Rovio put up on YouTube. Rovio's trailer lasts all of 29 seconds as the camera rises from toe to head on a set of knight's armor. Inside the helmet sits the Red Bird looking angrier than ever, perhaps because he's been thrust into a time period when chamber pots filled with human waste were dumped right into the streets. Luckily, it doesn't appear that will be part of the game play. So, what will the game play be like? It's...
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Just when you thought Rovio was out of ideas for new Angry Birds titles, another one is coming this fall called “Angry Birds: Stella”, a game apparently targeted toward girls that features the pink bird and a new cast of characters. Although the tag line on the press image for the game--”Best friends forever, most of the time”--makes Angry Birds Stella sound like a middle school catfight, Rovio’s actual announcement makes the game sound more interesting. “Angry Birds Stella is breaking the mold by introducing strong, passionate characters who really stand for something, while adding plenty of action and reality into the mix", said Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio Entertainment....
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You'd have to imagine that the birds in Angry Birds are some of the angriest around, but last night, a "friend" of the hacking group Syrian Electronic Army saw it fit to add to their angst. For an undetermined amount of time, an image was plastered on the main Angry Birds site that changed the name to "Spying Birds". For added dramatic effect, an NSA logo was affixed to the lead character. The Syrian Electronic Army states that the hacker behind this is "anti-NSA", which is of little surprise given the attack. The group announced the attack (as a proxy, apparently) on Twitter, although judging by the comments, it appears that the website went back to normal mere minutes later. Either the SEA...
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The unofficial mark for when a game franchise reaches maturity is when there is a sufficient number of beloved characters and a wide-enough user base to launch a kart game. In the tradition of Nintendo and its now-legendary MarioKart series, Rovio is releasing a kart version of Angry Birds this December. “Angry Birds Go!” looks like your standard 3D kart racing game. You can choose from a variety of both bird and pig characters, and there are upgradeable vehicles, ways to take out your opponents with special abilities, and multiple tracks and rich environments. Rovio also stated that like Angry Birds Star Wars 2, the kart game will support TELEPOD figurines, so players can teleport...
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While many of us are pretending to be mature, composed, and diffident instead of childishly gleeful about the impending release of Angry Birds Star Wars II on September 19th, there’s even more reason to get excited: Rovio will be releasing the game on consoles, so you can enjoy your Star Wars prequel adventures on the big screen as well as on mobile devices. A YouTube video posted by RovioMobile shows that Angry Birds Star Wars II will be available for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Wii and Wii U, and Nintendo 3DS. They’ll all be out on October 29th in the U.S. and globally on November 1st. Angry Birds Star Wars II appears to be something of a big step for...
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As we posted about over the weekend, Rovio teased us all with a image for an upcoming game, and it might just have been the easiest one to guess ever - after all, an angry bird projecting a Darth Vader shadow isn't too subtle. Today, Rovio confirms that its ultra-popular Angry Birds Star Wars game is getting a sequel. This comes as no surprise, of course, given the original scored over 100,000,000 downloads. Numbers like those still never cease to blow my mind. In the aforementioned post, Paul suggested that this game could tackle the franchise's prequels - and it appears he was spot-on. Given that, we're sure to see characters like Darth Maul and Anakin Skywalker - but what about Jar Jar Binks?...
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You didn't really think Rovio was finished milking its Angry Birds franchise, did you? That would be like shutting down a gold mining operation before you've run out of pay dirt. There's still plenty of money to be made, especially with Rovio having licensed the rights to use Star Wars characters and themes in its games, of which there will be another title. An official announcement will come after the weekend, but in the meantime, Rovio offered up the following teaser pic of what's to come: "Attention, Angry Birds fans! Stay tuned on Monday, July 15th, for big news about a brand new game!," Rovio states on its official blog. "We're talking the biggest character line-up ever, awesome new powers,...
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An angry bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, but what if you could have all three? Rovio is determined to find out. The Angry Birds creator will always have its wildly popular franchise to fall back on, which to date has tasked gamers with battling thieving pigs in space and in galaxies far, far away, but with the creation of Rovio Stars, Rovio Entertainment also gets to try its hand at publishing games for third-party developers. "Rovio Entertainment has positioned itself as one of the powerhouses of mobile entertainment, so moving into publishing is a logical step for us at this point," said Rovio’s EVP of Games Jami Laes. "We want to help our fans find quality entertainment...
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Can't get enough Angry Birds? We find that hard to believe with all the options out there, but if that's indeed the case, you'll be happy to know that the Facebook-centric Angry Birds Friends game made a mad dash to mobile and is now available to download on both iOS and Android. It's a free download, and like the Facebook version, it mixes traditional Angry Birds gameplay with social score keeping and competition. To promote the competitive aspect and keep things fresh, Rovio plans to hold weekly tournaments beginning Monday, May 6th, and will introduce new levels every week. "Every Monday a different tournament gets under way, with all-new challenges for you and your friends," Rovio stated...
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Rovio, creator of the wildly popular Angry Birds franchise, has every reason to smile. The developer announced its financial results for the company's full calendar year for 2012, noting that total consolidated full year revenue ballooned to €152.2 million (around $195 million), up more than 100 percent compared to 2011. "Year 2012 was another record-breaking year for Rovio. We doubled our revenue with an EBIT margin of 50 percent, more than doubled our headcount, established new offices and a New Business Ventures unit," said Rovio CFO Herkko Soininen. "Also, to protect our own, as well as our partners’ and our fans’ interests, we continue to invest heavily in brand protection...
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If you're a Star Wars fan (and who isn't?), Rovio believes it has the Angry Birds title you've been looking for all along. It's Angry Birds Star Wars, and it's now available on iOS, Android, Amazon Kindle Fire, Mac, PC, Windows Phone, and Windows 8. That covers just about every major platform, save for Linux on the desktop (feel free to "Wine" about it). "It’s a banner day for us," said Peter Vesterbacka, CMO of Rovio Entertainment. "This is our best Angry Birds game yet, and we’re excited for our fans to finally meet Luke, Leia, and the rest of the gang! But it’s more than just a game launch: we think fans are going to just love the new animated trailer and the Angry Birds...
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Love it or hate it, Rovio's Angry Birds is one of the most popular games of any mobile platform. What happens when you mash it together with Star Wars, one of the most popular movie franchises of all time? You end up with Angry Birds Star Wars, which brings a fresh new look and new gameplay to Rovio's cash cow. To give fans a glimpse of the finished product, Rovio has released a new trailer featuring the red bird as Luke and the pink bird as Princess Leia. It's the first gameplay footage of the upcoming title, complete with lightsabers, lasers, and the upbeat Cantina bar tune that's familiar to any Star Wars fan. Gameplay mechanics are what you're used to from any of the standard Angry Birds...
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Rovio may have learned how to wield the Force. According to the company's Angry Birds Tumblr page, a Star Wars tie-in to the highly popular game is in the works and will be unveiled on Monday in Times Square, New York. Whether that entails a new game remains to be seen, but whatever it is, it appears those PO'd birds are going with the Dark Side. "Welcome to the Angry Birds Tumblr page. Over the next few weeks we’ll have behind-the-scenes content, animations, comics, and much, much more. But what will this all be about exactly?! Here’s a clue…," Rovio teases on the page. Underneath the picture, Rovio writes: "Times Square, New York, October 8th, 10am EST. HINT: Head to Toys...
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Rovio's wildly successful Angry Birds franchise needs no introduction. But Bad Piggies? That one needs some explaining. Looking to, um, piggyback on the success of Angry Birds, Bad Piggies is what Rovio hopes will be the company's next mega hit. While the main characters look familiar, don't expect the same type of game play. Your job in the Bad Piggies spinoff is to "create the ultimate flying machine and steer [the pigs] safely to their destination." The maps and 60 levels are different, the game play mechanics are different, and the objective is decidedly different. There's no slingshot, but what you will find are a bunch of pieces and parts that you must assemble in order to get the pigs...
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We may not cover casual gaming too often here, but when it comes to a global phenomenon like Angry Birds, it's worth alerting the world that something is up. And that something is a new Rovio title en route. The creators of Angry Birds have today announced their newest game, Bad Piggies, launching September 27 for iOS, Android and Mac, with Windows Phone, Windows 8 and other PC counterparts to ship after that. What's wild is that this game is supposedly taking a different route -- there won't be a slingshot in sight. That's a massively different direction, and while the company has seen success in pivoting with Angry Birds Space, this will be the first true test not using the Angry Birds monicker....
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After spending so much time making the monster casual gaming hit Angry Birds and its several variants, developer Rovio was probably glad to have a new project to work on; the dev team is certainly even more delighted to see that a non-Angry Birds game could be a hit for the company. “Amazing Alex”, Rovio’s new baby, launched on Thursday and has already shot to the top of the App Store’s charts where it took the number one spot in the paid apps area. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the game has even a fraction of the staying power of Angry Birds--but even if it doesn’t it could reasonably qualify as a hit. For its part, Amazing Alex looks like a fun Rube Goldberg-esque...
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