SEGA Sammy Reportedly Set to Acquire 'Angry Birds' Maker Rovio Entertainment

I've got one primary question:

The Angry Birds Movie 3 when?

Jokes aside, even tho I'm partially serious on that. I think the implications of this are gonna be big! Granted, I can see the continuation of new Angry BIrds games, web-shorts, etc. But the crossover, or cosmetic appearances across Sega's games. Whether it be Sonic, or Samba De Amigo's grand return!

Oh great, now I'm wanting Angry Birds Koco's in Frontiers now. Sega, please!

Hope this acquisition causes Rovio to chill out with their anti-consumer decisions. (Like removing the first Angry Birds cause it was outperforming their mtx-filled alternatives lmao)

4 hours ago, Blueknight V2.0 said:

I've got one primary question:

The Angry Birds Movie 3 when?

Jokes aside, even tho I'm partially serious on that. I think the implications of this are gonna be big! Granted, I can see the continuation of new Angry BIrds games, web-shorts, etc. But the crossover, or cosmetic appearances across Sega's games. Whether it be Sonic, or Samba De Amigo's grand return!

Oh great, now I'm wanting Angry Birds Koco's in Frontiers now. Sega, please!

Ok, but Red in All-Stars Racing tho, with his All-Star move being him launching himself across the track, knocking out every racer in his way!

7 minutes ago, SticksSuperFan14 said:

Ok, but Red in All-Stars Racing tho, with his All-Star move being him launching himself across the track, knocking out every racer in his way!

Yes!! That'd be cool!

 

15 minutes ago, fink said:

(Like removing the first Angry Birds cause it was outperforming their mtx-filled alternatives lmao)

Yeah...that was disappointing news to me. I mean, I liked Angry Birds 2. But after awhile, I just went back to the 1st game & Seasons. Primarily for the timed waiting life system.

I have no faith in SEGA being able to handle the Angry Birds IP in a way that doesn't relate to fumbling a ball in dark at 4am.

Or, in other words, I expect this acquisition to change nothing about the state of Angry Birds

 

I'm all for SEGA acquiring more studios and updating its portfolio, but I have to ask... Why?

Why, of all studios, they decided to go for Rovio? Was Angry Birds a big sensation in Japan or something? I'm honestly just confused about this whole thing.

 

Mobile games are probably the most profitable of all games and Rovio has a legacy viral IP under its belt.

 

Sega has been preaching to their shareholders for years about their plans to aggressively expand in the mobile market. We see it in the heavy support games like Dash and Speed Battle. It was only a matter of time before they looked to expand their development power in this segment of the market. Rovio gives you a dev team with a viral smash on their resume and a valuable IP to back up the image. It makes sense.

Worth considering that outside the Angry Birds IP, it's probably just valuable for SEGA to have another fully set-up Western mobile game studio. I don't know if it's one billion dollars worthwhile, but it's something.

Think they'll force Rovio to put the classic version of Angry Birds back on the app stores?

13 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

Think they'll force Rovio to put the classic version of Angry Birds back on the app stores?

Wouldn't be surprised. After all, Sega would be the ones making the decisions at that point.

1 hour ago, GX -The Spindash- said:

Worth considering that outside the Angry Birds IP, it's probably just valuable for SEGA to have another fully set-up Western mobile game studio. I don't know if it's one billion dollars worthwhile, but it's something.

This is the big thing. SEGA previously bought Demiurge of Marvel Puzzle Quest fame in 2015, and put them to work on on SEGA Heroes and Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire/Tycoon. Those games were both pretty big flops, and SEGA songs Demiurge back to its original independent owners in 2020. Crucially, due to the way that the licensing works, SEGA didn't make a penny from Marvel Puzzle Quest, despite the games continued success (it's still going strong now). They didn't purchase Demiurge for that game; they purchased it for the mobile gaming prowess of the company itself. I'd wager a bet that that's really what they're interested in regarding Rovio too. Sure, the Angry Birds IP is something they'll likely get considerable mileage out of too, but that's not the main thing in this. 

Well this basically confirms it

 

And here is the actual confirmation. Interestingly enough, they sold "only" for 775 million euros, 25 million above what Playtika allegedly wanted to spend for it, instead of the reported 1 billion.

Very excited to see a new addition to the cast of Sonic characters - Red the Bird

EDIT: Here's the entire press release for said buyout

Hmmm, Somebody probably leaked the 1 Billion price-tag to make the end acquisition look like a steal. Shareholders eat that stuff up.

 

 

1 hour ago, Bobnik said:

Very excited to see a new addition to the cast of Sonic characters - Red the Bird
 

Y'know what's funny, the birds actually do have canonical names

Look forward to crossover game, Angry Hedgehogs, about Tails shooting Sonic into from canon, breaking Badniks and releasing releasing little animals.

If they hurry, they can make sequel Actually Angry Hedgehog (starring Shadow) to correspond with the movie.

Besides stuff I would like that people probably would have already mentioned like having the birds back in Dash and maybe skins for the Kocos in Frontiers (along with more SEGA costumes in that game), I would like to see them playable in a new crossover, be it racing or something else, and of course more Angry Birds games please!! I used to play some of them on mobile in the past, I will welcome them into the SEGA fold.

Seems like we can expect the birds to flock to consoles if the deal happens

I'll just leave this here.

 

Can't say I like that people are using this news to spread the narrative that Sonic Team is getting less of a budget because of it, even though Sega already confirmed they're giving Sonic Team a bigger budget and hiring more people. I'm still confident they'll probably be alright when making the next game.

2 minutes ago, SticksSuperFan14 said:

Can't say I like that people are using this news to spread the narrative that Sonic Team is getting less of a budget because of it, even though Sega already confirmed they're giving Sonic Team a bigger budget and hiring more people. I'm still confident they'll probably be alright when making the next game.

I personally ain't seen those kind of comments yet. Mostly just memes & whatnot. But yeah, honestly not even sure how anyone's translating the acquisition into meaning that in the slightest.

Now Eggman will have more options to power his machines

1 hour ago, NikoS said:

Now Eggman will have more options to power his machines

The Flickies sure seem more pissed off than usual.

I remember hearing about the Sega Store closing in Akihabara and worrying that the company might be in a bad situation financially. But with the purchase of Atlas and now Rovio, that strongly suggests they have very good finances these days, enough to risk making major purchases and expand their turf.

That's interesting and I'd be curious what this leads to. Though I'm not really much of a mobile gamer.

On 4/16/2023 at 7:16 PM, GX -The Spindash- said:

Worth considering that outside the Angry Birds IP, it's probably just valuable for SEGA to have another fully set-up Western mobile game studio. I don't know if it's one billion dollars worthwhile, but it's something.

Well, that's the price on aquiring every single Rovio share from all the Finnish work-pension funds in OMX Helsinki tbh. It's common in here to buy the shares on a somewhat higher price than what they have at the time in the market, don't know about other places. Was probably around the same percentage when Netflix bought Next Games if my memory serves me right. Oh well, the only lone game dev left in the OMX Helsinki is Remedy now I suppose unless I recall wrong.

Well, I'm just happy it wasn't Playtika that bought Rovio (hopefully people won't get boot as fast with Sega than they probably would've with that company), though it was a funny experience when one reporter pronounced Sega as 'see-ga'. It was an uncommon experience to hear Sonic mentioned in the TV news and see him on the newsroom screen when they explained what Sega's known for. Yeah, it was one of the main news up here even when it was still a speculation.