Angry Birds fever continues

Angry Birds

Here’s one Angry Birds fan who took things to a whole new level. An industrious fan decided to recreate one of her favorite iPhone games using balls, clay, eggs, slingshots and cardboard boxes for a sort of “live” version of the popular iPhone/iPad game. I sure hope that’s not a wick on the top of the big black bird … or do I?

Meanwhile, everyone’s talking about the previously-reported rumors of an Angry Birds movie. Variety recently spoke with Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio, creator of Angry Birds, where he talked about the success of the game and a short word on a probable sequel.

Add to all of this that Angry Birds is slated to hit the Sony PSP, PS3 and the Nintendo DS. Is it possible we’ll get sick of all this Angry Birds-ness before it’s allowed to become as big as Hed hopes? The title is certainly primes for moving in more directions, so long as Hed gets the ball rolling quickly.

TUAWAngry Birds fever continues originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rovio sells 6.5M copies of Angry Birds without advertising once

I got to meet the creators of Angry Birds back at E3 earlier this year, but because of our busy schedules, didn’t get too much of a chance to really talk with them in-depth about their experience on the App Store so far. Fortunately, GamesBeat has done just that, providing a nice profile of Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka and Mikael Hed, the two Finnish creators of one of the App Store’s most popular titles. They’re actually mobile app veterans — while Angry Birds is their biggest hit as a company, they’ve also developed for lots of other groups, including Real Networks and Electronic Arts.

The game was created to be casual, open to anyone to play, and use some really memorable characters that would resonate with anyone who picked it up. They accomplished those goals — the game has found a surprising following around the world, and almost everyone who owns an iPhone recognizes the birds and pigs characters. A US$4.99 iPad version has also taken off, and Rovio plans to bring the app to lots of other mobile devices as well. The growth has been entirely organic, too — they haven’t spent a single cent on advertising the game, instead relying completely on word-of-mouth and Apple’s own promotional tools.

And while their success is already quite widespread, the two say their goals are even bigger than what they’ve accomplished so far: they hope to eventually see 100 million paid downloads. Definitely possible — it’s interesting to see how iPhone-created brands are growing so quickly.

TUAWRovio sells 6.5M copies of Angry Birds without advertising once originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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