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After a brief mention back in the spring, Angry Birds is now available on the BlackBerry PlayBook. The quintessential mobile game has you slingshot various kinds of birds into shoddy structures, which in turn collapse onto the lazy, stupid, thieving pigs within. The absence of Angry Birds on any BlackBerry has even spawned a shameless “homage”, called Angry Farm, which I suspect will quickly disappear now that the real deal is in town.
Call me a gaming snob, but I’m really not a huge fan of Angry Birds. Although I’d much sooner recommend you check out Tofu, both games are perfect examples of how important casual gaming is to the success of mobile platforms. For tech fiends like us, that might seem a little frivolous, but if my mom knows what Angry Birds is, but not much else, guess what she’s going to make her shopping decisions based on? Simple, enjoyable games like Angry Birds sell devices to everyday people, especially when those devices happen to be tablets, which are just crying out for some kind of solid use case.
Although hardcore gamers might sooner recognize PlayBook titles like Need for Speed, Sim City, Dead Space, and Gameloft’s various knock-offs like Modern Combat and Starfront, they just reek of being watered-down versions of console and PC experiences. I’d love to see more game developers embracing the Angry Birds style, and developing new gameplay that was built for touchscreens, and not just shoehorned in to mobile because the right art assets were kicking around.
Anyhoo, three versions of Angry Birds are available in BlackBerry App World for five bucks a pop: vanilla, Seasons, and Rio.
About The Author
Simon Sage
Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.
