Sega Now Owns Angry Birds

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Earlier this year, back in April, game publisher Sega – best known for Sonic the Hedgehog – announced its intention to acquire Angry Birds developer Rovio for a little over $700 million in what it described as a “friendly takeover.” Now, that acquisition has gone through, and Red the Bird is officially a part of the Sonic universe (not really, but maybe someday).

The successful acquisition was announced on Twitter, with the official Sega account welcoming Rovio into the Sega family. The post included a picture of the movie version of the Angry Birds alongside the game versions of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, and promised “exciting adventures ahead.”

So what does this mean for Rovio and Angry Birds? Well, we kind of got the vibe earlier this year that Rovio wasn’t doing super well. The company pulled the remastered version of the original Angry Birds from the Google Play Store because it was reportedly cannibalizing its live service games, since it was a one-time purchase with no extra microtransactions.

This Sega acquisition could mean that game – and perhaps other now-defunct Angry Birds games – could find a second life, since Sega probably has the marketing chops to capitalize on both standalone games and live service games. It also probably doesn’t care quite so much about Angry Birds making heaps of money — it has its fingers in many different pies.

The big draw for Sega is undoubtedly the characters themselves. The Angry Birds movies, for all their faults, were pretty well received, and even made a decent amount of money at the box office. Given Sega’s multiple forays into children’s television and movies, including the recent Sonic Prime, it makes sense Sega would be looking for characters that might strike a chord with kids.

Either way, time will tell, and we expect it’ll be quite some time before we see the fruits of this acquisition.