Angry Birds Message Board older than one year ago

Rovio marketing man Peter "We're totally worth more than $1.2 billion" Vesterbacka announced plans to open a retail store in China. MCV reports the company is making the move due to the vast amount of unlicensed Angry Birds products being sold in the country. Rovio plans to copy items it sees in the market and officially sell them in its retail locations. It's estimated the company could generate $100 million in sales from Angry Birds in China this year.

Meanwhile, the Angry Birds phenomenon rolls along, with the Guardian reporting the game has been downloaded 500 million times. "This is a fantastic landmark achievement for us, and we're extremely delighted to see such an incredible amount of people enjoying our games," said Mikael Hed, chief executive at Rovio, debatably using the plural there, given the success of its back catalog.

Rovio, beyond product tie-ins, is currently working on an Angry Birds movie and hoping to really fling foul amounts of cash into corporate coffers when it goes public next year.

#angrybirds Earlier this year we heard about the Angry Birds board game from Matell. Then we had a chance to see the game in action at CES. Now we've noticed that it's for sale over on Amazon for $20. And there are PICTURES! More »

Angry Birds is not going away. It's penetrated the zeitgeist in a way that compares to Pac-Man, Tetris and Super Mario Bros. And now there's a retail shrine going up in China dedicated to Rovio's feuding piggies and birdies. According to BetaBeat's report, the store will be undercutting those profiting from the heavily bootlegged brand's unlicensed merchandise by getting ideas from the contraband t-shirts and plush toys that sell well in the People's Republic. How long do you think it'll be before such a store opens in the U.S.? More »

#angrybirds All you need is some painted pumpkins, a few two-by-fours, a couple cinderblocks and a makeshift slingshot and your Halloween celebration can be as exciting as these guys' was. More »

#angrybirds Continuing its series of short horror movies based on video games entirely lacking in horror, G4 has run The Birds of Anger, an Angry Birds flick that has more in common with Alfred Hitchcock than green pigs. More »

#angrybirds As this proud father sits his son down for a quick round of Angry Birds, a word of advice: turn your speakers down. More »

The Angry Birds movie is happening, Rovio's Andrew Stalbow told the BBC.

"We recently hired David Maisel, former Chairman of Marvel Studios who produced Iron Man, to lead our movie efforts," Stalbow said, noting that the company is working on a series of short films it will release next year. "We're building a next generation media company."
Stalbow also revealed that Angry Birds had been downloaded 400 million times, an increase of 50 million from just this time last month. Publisher Rovio is currently valued at $1.2 billion, with intentions to go public next year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=2b8flysT1cE Before and after: What you're seeing here is the moment when a person makes the leap from future suit to Gamer. You might want to turn your volume down. More »

#angrybirds It's been damned popular for a damned long time, but Angry Birds' numbers don't appear to be dwindling at all. As Mashable reports, 30 million people play the portable game each day, logging over 300 million minutes of gameplay. Each day! More »

#angrybirds The Occupy Wall Street movement has gone global, and Taiwan is as upset about the division of power and wealth as the demonstrators in New York. To underline their anger, well, what better universal symbol than the Angry Birds, seen in posters throughout this Taiwanese news broadcast. More »

Angry Birds is way, way popular -- sure -- but it is so popular as to elevate its progenitor's valuation beyond that of its already sky-high $1.2 billion estimate? CEO Peter Vesterbacka seems to think so, telling Bloomberg, "We're happy with our valuation but we think it's probably a bit north of that," referring to the aforementioned insanely high number.

Beyond astronomical sales of the hit fowl flinger, Vesterbacka's company has been pulling in additional revenue from merchandising. Millions of dollars every month, in fact, via the company's website -- apparently just the stuffed toys are selling "a million units a month," which doesn't account for Halloween costumes, movie licensing, clothing, and various other tchochkes. "We are very, very profitable. We're not a publicly traded company yet we can fund our own growth," Vesterbacka boasts in the interview, all the while attempting to bolster his company's value when it does go public. He doesn't offer an exact date, but says, "maybe a year from now" Rovio will be making its public stock offer.

When we last asked market analysts back in March how Rovio would fare an IPO, we were answered with reservation. And despite another seven months of earnings under the company's belt, we'd wager Vesterbacka's valuation estimates are a bit more lofty than the reality of things. But hey, we're not running any multimillion dollar corporations.

#angrybirds Whether or not you're a fan of The Annoying Orange web series, you should still check out this fruit-filled take on Angry Birds. More »

#angrybirds Part tribute to the casual video game of the moment, part homage to a series of Nike football commercials that ran a year or two ago, this clip shows a couple of college goalkeepers playing Angry Birds with trash cans, brick walls and anything else they can get their hands on. More »

#angrybirds Rovio's Andrew Stalbow took the stage during the Adobe keynote at MAX 2011 this afternoon to show off what his company's silly little bird game looked like running on Flash 11. Here's what I saw. More »

#angrybirds With a wide assortment of Angry Birds costumes and accessories available from the game's official shop this Halloween, it's unlikely we'll make it through the holiday without someone tossing a baby through the wall. More »

#angrybirds I'm not sure what the point of this video is, besides freaking me the hell out, but Taiwan's favorite news animators put together this Angry Birds video. More »

#angrybirds This Google Chrome ad has been out for about a week, but I didn't catch it until last night. More »

#angrybirds Hit iOS game Angry Birds has a wide variety of fans that range from talkshow host Glenn Beck to singer Noel Gallagher. Everyone likes Angry Bids! More »

Develop reports that Rovio, the team behind the massively successful Angry Birds, is looking to get into the publishing business with a stable of mobile indie devs. "We have some plans for this area, but not ready to announce yet," Rovio executive Peter Vesterbacka told Develop. "If we do something in the publishing area, you can expect it to be a bit different."

Vesterbacka went on to say that the company must either start throwing money into publishing or shoveling it into a fire. "It's really a question of physical space. We have nowhere to put the money. We have no chairs. No break room. Only rooms filled to capacity with money. Every day the man shows up with the truck and he says, 'Peter, I have your money for the day!' and we beg him to go, to leave us in peace, but no. There is always more money. We fear for our lives."

#angrybirds The Angry Birds Asian Challenge will have gamers competing in the popular casual game aboard a Finnair flight from Finland to Singapore later this week, the airliner said today. More »

Angry Birds has surpassed 350 million downloads, according to publisher Rovio's general manager Andrew Stalbow. Speaking with VentureBeat, the executive claims that mobile device users play the game for more than 300 million minutes each day collectively.

It's worth mentioning that not all those downloads were purchased, as the game has been gratis on several occasions. Of course, those freebie figures likely pale in comparison to the revenue generated across mobile and console platforms from people willing to pay for flinging fowl.

Rovio is currently in a round of funding that is rumored to value the company at over $1.2 billion, as the Angry Birds build a cross-media empire.

#angrybirds India's decision to take tough steps against political dishonesty may have had a little help from a flying, angry bird. More »

#angrybirds Remember that bigger-than-life Angry Birds attraction in China we told you about? Here's a look at it in action. The attraction is located in an amusement park in China's Hunan Province. More »

In January, Chillingo put out a PlayStation Minis version of the megahit Angry Birds. Then, in July, it was replaced by one published by original developer Rovio, with better load times and other improvements; however, since it was sort of a new game by a new publisher, players couldn't just update to the new one without paying for a second copy of Angry Birds.

PSN Stores finally got word of a kludgy solution, from Rovio's VP of Franchise Development, Ville Heijari. "...anyone who purchased the older version can contact PSN customer service directly," Heijari said. "PSN customer service will check your account to verify the purchase, and provide you with a voucher to download the new version."

That's a bit of a hassle, but it's definitely preferable to dropping another four bucks on Angry Birds.

#drugs Noel Gallagher, the former Oasis songwriter, probably doesn't remember most of the 1990s. He was out of his mind, doing drugs—maybe even doing them off a glass top Space Invaders arcade cabinet. More »

#ohchina Oh China. First a bootleg Blizzard theme park and now this, bootleg, real-life games of Angry Birds? What's next, fake Apple stores? Fake consoles? Oh. More »

#gamingappoftheday Can we cut the crap with Angry Birds satires already? I'm not talking about the direct ripoffs, which you see on Facebook, flash sites and popup ads congratulating you for winning an iPad 3. I'm talking about games whose wink-and-nod visual style, method of scoring, and "story" don't give themselves enough credit for what they do that's actually different. More »

#angrybirds When musicians decide to take video game music and make it better, the results are almost always fantastic. More »

#angrybirds Daily Beast political blogger Andrew Sullivan likes a lot of things. He likes views from your window and midday pop-culture digressions; he likes mercilessly ripping on Sarah Palin. He also likes Angry Birds, and often takes breaks from reacting to the political news of the day to share super-cute pictures of things relating to Chillingo's casual sensation. If the internet produces something Angry Birds-related, Sullivan will probably blog about it. Hmm, sounds familiar. More »

Angry Birds developer Rovio is out to prove money really can't buy happiness, with a deal to receive funding that would make the company worth $1.2 billion, Bloomberg rumors. Rovio wants to expand the explosive brand into other entertainment sectors, including making an Angry Birds movie and selling the game and its products in China, which may explain talks with an entertainment company, as revealed by Bloomberg's two anonymous sources.

Michael Pachter pegs EA, Zynga and Walt Disney as likely candidates to do a deal with Rovio, as Disney could make Angry Birds a movie and theme park, and Zynga could turn it into Farmville. While one of those sounds immensely more appealing to us (Angry Bird Slingshot ride, anyone?), either are easily possible, even if more than $1 billion seems a bit much to pay for a phone app.