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Who knew that behind the scenes of the planet's favorite avian-launching casual game hides a twisted narrative of political intrigue and wartime subterfuge? It took the keen minds of Rooster Teeth to discover this plot and commit it to video, which they've done in the trailer posted below.

Bribing people to use new app stores with free Angry Birds is the hot new thing. Soon after Amazon offered a free Android download of Angry Birds Rio as its inaugural Appstore offer, Best Buy and Intel are partnering to slingshot a free PC version of Rovio's mobile hit to US residents via the Intel AppUp Center. The only catch is that, you know, you have to use the AppUp store. Click here to find the offer.

If you're in the UK, there's no need to be angry (unless you're a bird): the same offer is available to you through Currys.

[Thanks, Marco]

Angry Birds is a catapult game that has proven quite successful on mobile telephones. In other news, Elvis Presley sold some records, chocolate tastes quite good and Star Wars offered positive licensing opportunities.

The PC version of Rovio’s bland but compulsive one-button physics puzzler perhaps hasn’t proved quite so much a phenonemon, but that’s probably got something to do with being far more expensive than the eyeTelephone and (free) Android versions. For a limited period, this imbalance is addressed – you can grab the game for free. (more…)

#iphone Rio, the computer animated avian comedy, is certainly a good enough excuse for more Angry Birds. To wit, Angry Birds publisher Rovio has released Angry Birds Rio for iPhone, iPad and Android, a game that's a surprisingly capable improvement on the original. More »

Amazon.com's newly launched Appstore for Android is kicking things off with a free download of Angry Birds Rio. Amazon's competitor to Google's Android Marketplace will be giving away premium apps for free every day, so it may be worth investigating as an alternative. More details at Gizmodo. More »

Angry Birds developer Rovio has been on a roll: raking in millions of unit sales, breaking through to the mainstream and recently receiving another $42 million from investors. Now the company is talking about going public on the Nasdaq with an IPO in the next five years.

"At an estimated value of nearly $300 million, it would still be considered a relatively small company," EEDAR's Jesse Divnich explained when we asked about the company's chances. "Gameloft, for example has a current market cap of $344 million (the cost for someone to own every share of the company), this is compared to Activsion which has a market valuation of over $12 billion, and Google at $185 billion. In fact, most large mutual funds typically don't invest in anything with a market cap under $1 billion. If they do, they typically classify them as 'high-risk' or 'aggressive plays.'"

Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter had similar reservations about the company telling Joystiq, "Any company can go public, but the rule of thumb is that the company has at least $50 million of annual revenue before they try to sell stock. That revenue has to be recurring, and I think that is an obstacle for Rovio, which so far is a one-hit wonder. If they can replicate what they've done with Angry Birds, there might be some interest."

Pachter also mentioned that the administrative costs of being public is about $5 million annually, which is why small companies don't usually take the stock route.

We’re still waiting for our WiiWare and 3DS versions of Angry Birds, so perhaps these videos will help keep the title fresh in our minds as we wait. and here

Mardi Gras is not a time for video games. So as I was sitting on a float in the staging ground waiting for the parade ahead of us to finish, I drank a beer to pass the time. But what was the guy next to me doing? Angry Birds...

#video Almost lost amidst the insanity of a weekend packed with both Penny Arcade Expo East and South by Southwest was this amazing Angry Birds 3D spectacular. More »

We know you're sick of listening to nerdy boys talk about games, so we've gathered together all the female editors to give you a different perspective. Girlfight is the place to hear Nicole Tanner, Dana Jongewaard, Kristine Steimer, Audrey Drake, and Meghan Sullivan talk about the games they love as well as serious issues about women in gaming and the games industry in general...

#consolewars Rovio's Angry Birds is huge. Cultural touchpoint. The sort of thing Jon Stewart can joke about on The Daily Show without qualification. But that doesn't make Rovio executive Peter Vesterbacka an expert on the videogame market. iPads aren't killing consoles. More »

A retailer exclusivity agreement has been announced for a promotional game, potentially limiting its ability to reach users and promote the movie, but also increasing the promotion for the retailer. Amazon announced that it will be the exclusive carrier of the Android version of Angry Birds Rio, meaning that the movie tie-in title will not be available on the Android Market at launch, but will instead be downloadable through the Amazon Appstore.

What? "Amazon Appstore?" The retailer is launching its own digital marketplace for Android "very soon," and you would do well to familiarize yourself with it, because it'll also be home to "exclusive" debuts for ad-free Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons.

During a panel at this past weekend's South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Rovio exec Peter Vesterbacka told attendees that the company's bird-flinging pig terrorizer, Angry Birds, has been downloaded over 100 million times. As Vesterbacka revealed during GDC, more than 30 million of those downloads have been of the game's freemium Android version, and both the lite and paid versions topped 2010's iOS charts. Since it's release on PSN in January, Angry Birds has also dominated PlayStation Minis sales. So many scared pigs!

During his presentation, Vesterbacka went on to make a somewhat dubious claim, however, saying, "Tablets are killing consoles. Four generations of new tablets come before a new console, if one ever comes." While hardware iteration of tablets has certainly been speedier than that of consoles, we don't see tablets "killing" the home console market anytime soon. Nokia interim VP of services Tero Ojanpera apparently agrees with us, as he countered Vesterbacka by arguing that, despite the iPad 2's ability to output 1080p video, most folks won't ever plug their tablet devices into their televisions.

Not to mention, Vesterbacka and company recently hired Remedy co-founder Petri Järvilehto to spearhead Angry Birds expansion to consoles. "We want to make Angry Birds a long-lasting global gaming franchise, and we see the console platforms as a way of delivering an even more entertaining, powerful and involving experience," Rovio CEO Mikael Hed said last month in an announcement of the company's intention "to take the Angry Birds success story to current and emerging console platforms."

#science With more than 50 million copies of Rovio's bird-slinging casual game downloaded, Angry Birds is one of the most popular games of all time, but why? Usability engineering consultant Charles Mauro tears down the surprising secrets to Angry Birds' success. More »

The hit mobile game is slated to hit the network sometime this year.

Rovio's continued success with the Angry Birds franchise means we'll be seeing much more from the Finland-based devs in the coming months -- the company says it's taking a "Disney 2.0" approach to fleecing its bird-flinging franchise. "Look at how Disney got started. Steamboat Willie created Mickey Mouse, then they added more characters. You can see the same pattern today, but everything is happening much, much faster," studio lead Mikael Hed explains in a recent Wired UK piece (via Develop), adding, "Other brands used to build recognition over the course of decades. We've done it in one year."

A "collaborative" Facebook version of the game, as well as potential sports and driving spin-offs, are specifically named. Hed says the Facebook version will have "completely new aspects to it that just haven't been experienced in any other platform," and that "the pigs will have a more prominent role." No word is given on when the game will launch on the 'book.

This is, of course, in addition to the planned XBLA, Wii, and 3DS versions (it's already out on PSN). There's also a board game. And merchandise. And ... uhh ... this terrifying live-action version.

#video In honour of the great nation of Finland, talk show host Conan O'Brien built a working version of smash mobile game Angry Birds. Using Ikea furniture. Then smashed it all to pieces. More »

Perhaps spurred on by ripoff apps already in place, Angry Birds' developer says the game will have a Facebook adaptation inside of the month. More »

We've been jonesing to see a life-size version of Angry Birds since Neil Patrick Harris teased us with his chicken catapult during the VGAs. Yesterday on Conan, we got our wish -- not with real-life poultry, mind you, but with bird-shaped balls and really unstable Ikea furniture.

Turns out people like Angry Birds -- and free things. The freemium Android release of Rovio Mobile's wing-slinging hit has been downloaded over 30 million times, according to Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka, who is speaking at GDC as part of a Google-run Android monetization panel.

He also provided evidence that people continue playing Angry Birds after that initial download. 80 percent of Android users, Vesterbacka said, downloaded subsequent updates, indicating that they've retained interest in the game. This is good news for Rovio, but bad news for those birds -- sustained anger isn't good for you.

Rovio's "Mighty Eagle," Peter Vesterbacka, announced during his day-one GDC panel that -- unsurprisingly -- all major holidays will eventually be worked into themed updates for the company's mega-hit Angry Birds, including the upcoming St. Patrick's Day. According to Vesterbacka, the new content will be "very green" and "filled with more pigs than ever." The millions of Angry Birds addicts should be tickled pink by this news.

Speaking of addicts, Vesterbacka says that you (yes, you!) really like the option to buy the Mighty Eagle power-up. He reports that 40 percent of all players who've purchased Angry Birds since the "smart bomb" style, level-skipping item was introduced last December have bought it at least once -- at 99 cents a pop.

#xboxliveindieclips There is currently no way to play Angry Birds on the Xbox 360. Indie developer FrozenSoft fills the gap as best it can with FishCraft, the epic battle between forces aquatic and feline. It's not all unoriginal! More »

#humor While they may be slightly more two-dimensional than traditional entertainment talent, the message of these iconic avian and porcine personalities is no less important: Stop this senseless Angry Birds war. More »

#video We've posted a few zillion video game themed cakes on Kotaku, but rarely do they impress as much as this Angry Birds-inspired creation. It's one of the rare birthday cakes that's actually playable. More »

You might have a wonderful father. This video, unfortunately, will knock him down a few pegs. Seriously, this father made a functional Angry Birds cake for his son's sixth birthday. Watch the video, and feel your childhood worsen retroactively. Click this link to learn how to be a better father.

#angrybirds Angry birds and thieving pigs are mortal enemies, but if they would just take the time to compare each other to a kiss from a rose maybe everything would be okay. More »

No wonder developers are jumping ship to Rovio: it's flooded with money. Angry Birds has managed to perch itself atop not only the iOS and Android marketplaces, but it has claimed the top spot on the PlayStation Store as well. Released as a mini, the port works on both PS3 and PSP, which undoubtedly helped its sales. The rest of the top 10 for January include:
Angry Birds Tetris X-Men Pac-Man Championship Edition DX Final Fantasy VII Wheel of Fortune Marvel vs Capcom 2 Mass Effect 2 Castle Crashers Risk Factions Mass Effect 2 is a surprising addition to the top downloads list, considering it is a full $60 game. Perhaps the success of Bioware's RPG will cause more publishers to consider releasing full retail games via the PlayStation Store?

Last night's blockbuster football contest might not have featured the most hee-larious advertisements in all of Super Bowl history -- but you can't say they weren't rewarding. Take, for instance, the trailer for 20th Century Fox's Rio, which featured a split-second image of one of the avian protagonists of Angry Birds, as well as the numbers "13-12." A few of the game's more dedicated players have cracked that riddle -- firing off the birds in a specific sequence and direction on said stage unlocks a special, Super Bowl-themed level, provided you've updated to the most recent version of the game.

Check out a video after the jump to see how the bird-firing maneuver is properly executed. Also, we'd like to see more video game easter eggs in television commercials, please. Trust us, ad executives, it's good for you too -- we must have watched that freaking Rio commercial like, twenty times now.

#painting Artist Sam Spratt, whose work we love to feature on Kotaku, decided to show Angry Birds players how the pigs feel. Poor pigs. Click the image to see it in full 1080p splendor. More »