An Angry Birds Balloon
According to The Wall Street Journal, Sega is reportedly on the verge of acquiring Rovio Entertainment, the company behind the Angry Birds mobile game franchise, for a staggering 1 billion USD. Sources suggest that the deal could be finalized as early as next week.
It's surprising that Sega, or rather its parent company Sega Sammy Holdings, would be willing to invest so much in Rovio, given the decline in popularity of the Angry Birds games. Although the franchise was a huge hit in 2009, it has since lost its appeal, with Rovio reporting falling profits and layoffs in 2014. The company attempted to revive the franchise with The Angry Birds Movie in 2016, which was a box office success but received poor reviews. The sequel, The Angry Birds Movie 2, did not fare as well. Rovio has also faced stiff competition from other mobile games like Candy Crush, which has eaten away at the franchise's popularity.
Despite this, perhaps Sega sees potential in launching Angry Birds into the night. Rovio has recently removed the original Angry Birds game from the Google Play Store and renamed the iOS version to Red's First Flight, seemingly to encourage players to switch to its freemium sequels. Rovio previously came close to a deal with Israeli developer Playtika for 800 million USD, but talks fell through in March. Now, it seems that Sega may soon own the Finland-based company.
Rovio's original Angry Birds game was the first mobile game to reach 1 billion downloads, and the company claims that its combined library of games has reached 5 billion downloads as of last year.
Source: WSJ