Recently the Finnish company behind the seminal Angry Birds, Rovio, announced that their game had been downloaded more than 200 million times, cementing its title as the most popular game of the smartphone era, and the most popular game of all time, eclipsing Tetris by almost 2-to-1.
One of the keys to Rovio’s success has been a multi-platform approach. Available first on the iPhone for $o.99, the game was then ported to Android where it set download records, crashed stores and generated a ludicrous amount of advertising revenue. Next the game launched on Symbian and Maemo for Nokia phones, and the rest, as they say, is history.
By our count, Angry Birds in now available on the following platforms –
- iPhone
- Android
- iPad (Angry Birds HD)
- Symbian
- Maemo
- PC (Intel AppUp Store)
- Mac (Mac App Store)
- Chrome Web Store
- Playstation 3
- Playstation Portable
With development ongoing on for –
- XBox 360
- Wii
- Nintendo DS
- Nintendo 3DS
- Windows Phone 7
With availability on ten platforms and five more in the works, Rovi has put even Amazon’s multi-platform strategy to shame. However, they’re not done yet. Rovio announced late yesterday they are partnering with Roku, makers of the well-regarded family of set-top boxes of the same name.
Roku are planning to distribute the game through the Roku Channel Store, as well as “launch an Angry Birds video channel featuring Angry Birds animated shorts; and sell Angry Birds merchandise.”
So now you can relax with a game of Angry Birds before watching an Angry Birds cartoon, then drift off into a restful sleep under your Angry Birds duvet in your Angry Birds jimmy-jams.
What remains to be seen is how the game will be controlled. Roku’s family of boxes only ship with rudimentary television remotes – hardly ideal for manipulating your Angry Birds in two dimensions. Perhaps some sort of joystick will be in the offing? We’ll know more when the game launches, and all those faithful Angry Birds fans have another yet platform on which to kill those dastardly pigs.
