Angry Birds developer Rovio has just confirmed that more than 7 million copies of its hit game have been downloaded on the Android Market. So if you weren't already aware, the game is a huge success.
Android has historically been considered a black hole when it comes to mobile games, as it has remained largely overlooked by the major game publishers. The Android Market has a significantly higher concentration of free apps, and a user base that is less willing to pay for premium content.
Understanding this, Angry Birds developer Rovio put the game on the Android Market as a free download, and looked to advertisers to pay for an in-game presence. It's now far and away the highest performing game on the Market.
In response to atweet commentingthat not all Android games are free, Rovio responded:"true, but the ones with more than 50K downloads are... We just hit 7M downloads on Android."
This is, of course, on top of the 10 million times the game has been purchased on the iTunes App Store, at 99 cents a pop.
The game has brought Rovio from rags to riches. The tiny developer that no one had ever heard of as early as the beginning of this year is now talking about Hollywood movie and TV deals, and is starting a promising line of Angry Birds merchandise.
A couple months ago, video game publishing giant EA purchased Angry Birds' publisher Chillingo for $20 million, thanks to its success in marketing Angry Birds, and it wasrecently announcedthat the game will be coming to XBLA, PSN, and Wii.
[Source:Twitter - Rovio]
Nov 30, 2010
