Finally, Sega has completed its acquisition of Angry Birds developer Rovio, officially plunking down a cool $776 million to acquire the company. The deal was first floated back in April, but both companies had to jump through some finalization and regulatory hoops.
Sega’s hoping the purchase will give them a stronger foothold in the mobile space, despite the golden days of Angry Birds fandom passing almost 15 years ago.
Welcome to the SEGA family, @Rovio!
— SEGA (@SEGA) August 18, 2023
We’re so thrilled to celebrate Rovio becoming a member of the SEGA Group. Get ready for exciting adventures ahead!pic.twitter.com/LV5QkpZrrE
However, Rovio is not just the one IP. Beyond Angry Birds and its many spinoff games, the company is known for the match-three puzzler Sugar Blast and the narrative mystery title Small Town Murders. Okay, those aren’t exactly high-profile IPs, but Sega gets something beyond recognizable franchise titles with this purchase.
It gets a ready-made infrastructure for developing, publishing, and advertising mobile games. This means it can hit the ground running when making mobile titles based on its own IPs, like Sonic, Samba de Amigo, Persona, Football Manager, and others. There are also hundreds of older games just waiting for mobile ports.
Back in April, CEO Haruki Satomi said:
The mobile gaming market has especially high potential, and it has been Sega’s long-term goal to accelerate its expansion in this field.
Beyond Sega’s pre-existing franchises, the company will likely continue with more Angry Birds mobile games. Despite losing some of that late 2000s luster, Angry Birds is still a fairly hot commodity, with related movies, TV shows, and even a bizarre restaurant in New York City.
Maybe pairing up those annoyed avians with a certain blue hedgehog will bring the one-time mobile smash back into the collective consciousness. Now, who’s up for flinging Knuckles into a bunch of pigs?
