Finland’s national news agency, YLE, has cited a Bloomberg report that says Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds, have turned down a $2 billion offer from Zynga, who recently purchased Draw Something for $200 million. Rovio refused to comment on the story, which pains us, since we’re pretty sure that Angry Birds is a one hit wonder that will go down in videogame history as one of the most popular smartphone games to ever be released, but failed to change with the times. Rovio’s most recent game, Angry Birds Space, introduces some new elements to make the franchise appear fresh on the surface, but it’s not enough in the long term. Right now Rovio makes most of their money from selling Angry Birds toys, apparel, and all other sorts of high margin junk that was made in China, to their ultra loyal fans. We’d like to point out that Rovio had 50+ games before Angry Birds, so they definitely got lucky once, but will they get lucky again?
The bigger story here is Zynga. They’ve been on a shopping spree, buying up many independent game houses and developers to build themselves what amounts to one of the largest publishing studios in the mobile industry. What do they know about the future that we don’t? We know people love apps, and that smartphone penetration will only increase with time, but does the benefit of cross promoting titles really help contribute to the bottom line?
Anyway, enough about Angry Birds and Zynga. We want to know what other games you’ve been playing and can’t put down. We’re huge fans of Tiny Wings, Temple Run, and Jetpack Joyride, at least on the iPhone. What’s out there for Android? And in terms of hardware, are you playing more on your smartphone, your tablet, or are you content with your console?