Angry Birds is getting ready for a billion dollar takeover…by Sega [Ενημέρωση] – games

Sega may close the big deal early next week, according to people who spoke to WSJ.

It’s surprising to think that Sega – specifically, parent company Sega Sammy Holdings – would want to spend a lot of money on Rovio, given the decline in popularity of the Angry Birds games. The original game was a hit back in 2009, but it appears the franchise has been struggling since its peak in 2014, when Rovio reported declining profits and layoffs.

In 2016, Rovio attempted a movie adaptation, The Angry Birds Movie, which was a box office success and still ranks as the seventh highest-grossing video game movie, even though the reviews weren’t as good. Its 2019 sequel, The Angry Birds Movie 2, was not as successful. Rovio watched as competitors like Candy Crush became increasingly successful, which affected interest in Angry Birds.

Recently, Rovio removed the original Angry Birds game from the Google Play Store and renamed the iOS version Red’s First Flight. The move was ostensibly to catapult players to its lucrative free-to-play sequels and to eclipse the original game’s buy once and play forever business model.

Rovio was previously close to an $800 million deal with Israeli developer Playtika to take over the game, but those talks officially fell through in March. Now, Sega is said to be preparing to take over the Finland-based company behind Angry Birds.

Rovio’s original Angry Birds was the first smartphone game to reach 1 billion downloads (a record certified by Guinness World Records), with Rovio claiming its combined library of titles has reached 5 billion downloads since last year. So perhaps there is an argument for the company’s high valuation of five dollars per download. We remind you that Take-Two acquired Zynga, the creator of many hits, for a whopping $12.7 billion.

Perhaps Sega has a new crop of heroes on par with Sonic and his pals, just waiting for an epic smartphone game franchise to spin off.

Update 4/17 14:03 – SEGA version advertisement Under it, it proceeds to acquire Rovio, the creator of Angry Birds, for €706 million.