While we all obsessed with the upcoming release of Angry Birds Space (many links: official announcement, meet the birds, gameplay footage, and backgrounds), Rovio has been hard at work expanding outward.
First, while on the topic of Angry Birds Space, Rovio has teamed up with MTV in a promotion against Cyber Bullying. As explained in their press release, Rovio is joining MTV’s “A THIN LINE” campaign and MTV will be airing an Angry Birds-themed public service announcement on their channels. Additionally, starting on March 22nd with the Angry Birds Space release and extending through April, Angry Birds players will receive a hint to accessing a secret Golden Egg level in Angry Birds Space by contributing to MTV’s Draw Your Line app. Cyber Bullying affects nearly 50% of all adolescents and teens in the United States, and less than 20% of those bullied report it to a parent, so this is a very valuable cause to support.
Rovio has also partnered with Finnish Formula One driver Heikki Kovalainen, according to the racer’s website. This collaboration not only features Kovalainen in a nifty new helmet, but will also merchandise and a new Angry Birds web based game. The merchandise will be co-branded, presumably between Rovio and F1, and should be released this spring. The new web game will be launching sometime in the summer and will likely feature some cool level designs. For those interested, here’s a fun fact. This is actually the second Angry Birds reference to a Finnish F1 driver (preceded by Keke Rosberg in Danger Above 7-11).
Now for the grand-daddy of them all, and straight from The Mighty Eagle himself.
CMO Peter Vesterbacka told Business Insider that Rovio plans to launch FIVE brand new apps this year, with Angry Birds Space being only the beginning. While not specifically said, we think that the web games — such as the F1 above — are not included in that list, but could be wrong. Rather, we think that this counts only full-blown apps like Space and Rio. Also of notable interested, Rovio is working on their first non-Angry Birds app in over three years. For those who don’t know the story, Rovio created about 50 apps and was on the verge of bankruptcy before Angry Birds took off like — well like a rocket for space. Whether this new app will be as big as Angry Birds remains to be seen, but I will be buying it the day it is released, that’s for sure.
Let us conclude by putting everyone’s minds at ease. Vesterbacka specifically said in his interview with Business Insider, “What’s very important, we are doing frequent updates to all our games.”
