Angry Birds Space downloaded 100 million times in just 76 days

Rovio, the Finnish company that brought you Angry Birds, has just tweeted that their latest space themed title has been downloaded over 100 million times. According to The Next Web, that milestone was achieved in just 76 days. Our back of the envelope calculations say that’s an average of 1.32 million downloads per day, which is quite an achievement. So what’s new in “Angry Birds Space” compared to the original “Angry Birds”? The inclusion of a gravity element, which means you now have to worry about not just how you angle your bird, but also how the pull of nearby planets and asteroids might impact your trajectory. It sounds like a small tweak, but it makes a huge difference. We’re big fans of the video that Rovio made to promote Angry Birds Space because it featured NASA’s Don Pettit lecturing kids about the importance of science. Oh and did we mention that Don was also onboard the International Space Station during the video. That’s bad-ass.

Now some of you might be thinking that Rovio is a one trick pony. That the Angry Birds franchise is going to be milked for years to come. Fear not, because last month we heard Mikael Hed, Rovio’s CEO, say that the company will introduce a new title called “Amazing Alex” over the summer. It’s a physics based game, like Angry Birds, but instead of flinging objects you’ll be tasked with building a Rube Goldberg machine. On paper it sounds interesting, but until we get our hands on it we can’t say whether or not it’ll be a hit. The fact that Rovio is going to be promoting the title to their rapid fans however ensures that sales will be rather brisk.

Stepping away from Rovio for a second, what other games are you playing? Leave us a comment below, we’re curious to know! Some of us in the office are hopelessly addicted to Cut the Rope: Experiments. It was free last week, but even at the new price of $0.99 we can’t recommend it enough.