Rovio Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

No Comment: Rovio exec's wife dresses up Angry Birds style

by Mike Schramm (Dec 7th, 2011)

In these pics over at the Hollywood Reporter, you can clearly see Peter Vesterbacka, the CEO of Rovio, who you may remember from his speech earlier this year at GDC 2011. The woman he's pictured with is none other than his wife, Teija Vesterbacka, who, according to the pictures, looks like a ...

Rovio reportedly turns down $2.25 billion from Zynga

by Mike Schramm (Nov 28th, 2011)

We're pretty late in the year, but this might be one of the craziest stories of 2011 -- according to sources, Angry Birds developer Rovio turned down a deal with social game company Zynga, to the tune of $2.25 billion. That's right, billion with a B, and they turned it down. I actually believe ...

Angry Birds hits 350 million downloads

by Kelly Hodgkins (Sep 13th, 2011)

Angry Birds continues its explosive growth. Almost 21 months after its December 2009 launch, the bird-flinging game now boasts of 350 million downloads and over 300 million minutes of gameplay each day. And its merchandising side is seeing similar gains. According to Andrew Stalbow, Rovio's ...

Angry Birds' Rovio aiming for $1.2 billion valuation

by Mike Schramm (Aug 12th, 2011)

Rovio, the development company behind the insanely popular iOS game property Angry Birds, is working on getting more funding. A deal is reportedly underway that would put the value of the studio at $1.2 billion. That's billion with a freakin' B, which is an astronomical number for a mobile game ...

Apple updates its response to Lodsys suit, but doesn't move to invalidate patents

by Chris Rawson (Jul 27th, 2011)

Apple has updated its proposed answer to the Lodsys suit against third-party developers. Lodsys has recently expanded its patent suit to include big-name iOS developers like Rovio (of Angry Birds), EA, Atari, Take-Two Interactive and Square-Enix, according to The Mac Observer. Florian Mueller ...

Angry Birds creators plan new game, location-based platform

by Mike Schramm (Jun 15th, 2011)

Rovio's next big plan for Angry Birds is to add in some location-based features, according to GigaOM, with a platform it's calling Angry Birds Magic. The platform will use location-based information on a number of different smartphones (including, presumably, the iPhone, though there's some ...

T-Mobile ad illustrates Angry Birds' immense popularity

by Steven Sande (Jun 10th, 2011)

One app that has grown from an iPhone hit to a worldwide phenomenon is Rovio Mobile's Angry Birds. Whether you're a fan of knocking over pigs and structures by flinging birds, or go berserk when you hear the Angry Birds theme music, you have to admit that the popularity of what was originally a ...

Rovio up for three Develop Awards

by Mike Schramm (May 6th, 2011)

Rovio, maker of Angry Birds, has been nominated for three different awards at this year's Develop Awards, honoring some of the best names in video game and interactive software development. The Finnish company has been nominated for Best Use of a License or IP (presumably for the Angry Birds ...

20th Century Fox talks about the success of Angry Birds Rio

by Mike Schramm (Apr 20th, 2011)

I attended an event called the LA AppShow last night here in Santa Monica, CA, and I saw seven demos of various apps that are seeing significant success on the App Store. Matt McMahon from 20th Century Fox was there, and while his company didn't publish the actual app in question, he's ...

Ads in Angry Birds cause some squawking

by Mike Schramm (Mar 18th, 2011)

Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka was pretty outgoing at GDC a few weeks ago, claiming that "it all works" when it comes to ad-driven business models on the App Store. But he might be relearning that lesson the hard way right now -- after an update to Angry Birds HD on the iPad added a "News" section ...

Rovio picks up $42 million in first funding round

by Mike Schramm (Mar 10th, 2011)

Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds, has nabbed a total of $42 million in a first round of venture capitalist funding. This isn't necessarily quite that big a payday for the company -- while that's obviously a lot of money, the company has reportedly already pulled in about $70 million from app ...

Angry Birds ties into Super Bowl ad with secret level hint

by Steven Sande (Feb 7th, 2011)

During the Super Bowl game last night, you may have seen an ad for a soon-to-be-released animated feature called Rio. Cleverly tied into that advertisement was a way to get access to a secret level in that special app installed on just about every iPhone, iPad, Mac and iPod touch in the universe: ...

Angry Birds doing a movie tie-in as well

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jan 31st, 2011)

Hot on the heels of the announcement that Doodle Jump will be working with Universal to promote the upcoming Hop movie, Angry Birds developer Rovio Mobile confirmed it will be producing a new version of Angry Birds set in Rio. This new version will be used to promote the upcoming movie Rio, which ...

Angry Birds creators: Apple still does mobile apps best

by Mike Schramm (Dec 29th, 2010)

In a recent interview, Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio (the makers, if you haven't heard by now, of Angry Birds) says that from a developer viewpoint, Apple is the platform to go with. "They have gotten so many things right," says Vesterbacka, "and they know what they are doing and they call the shots." ...

Angry Birds developers to launch 'Bad Piggy Bank' mobile payment system

by David Quilty (Dec 10th, 2010)

After millions of downloads of their popular game Angry Birds and a plan to take over the gaming world, Rovio is looking to get a little more from users; they now want to implement a mobile payment system inside the game itself. In an effort to grab a few more bucks from impulsive buyers/gamers they ...