Angry Birds Tops Half A Billion Downloads: Are You Still Playing?
This week Rovio has announced that not only had they jumped above 500 million downloads with Angry Birds, they'd therefore become the one with the most downloaded game in the history of gaming. As it appears that the Guinness Book of World Records doesn't have such a listing, I suppose we'll have to take their word for it. Of course that's not the only statistic Rovio is offering up this week, they going on to note that their users average about 300 million minutes of playing time a day, that equaling out to 200,000 years of playing time so far in total for the Angry Birds suite. Here's our question for you: are you amongst these people? And furthermore – do you still play?
While Angry Birds was certainly an obsession of yours truly through the late months of 2010 and the early months of 2011, interest has certainly waned for the entire SlashGear crew over the summer. If you've been an addict of the game in the past, are you still part of the Angry community? Did you download the latest expansion of Seasons, for example, the Halloween 2 episode?
Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio and that fellow you always see on stage in the red bird hoodie whenever there's an Angry Birds announcement to be made, had the following to say on the subject:
"This is a fantastic landmark achievement for us, and we're extremely delighted to see such an incredible amount of people enjoying our games. We remain committed to creating more fun experiences and bringing exceptional quality to Angry Birds Fans everywhere." – Hed
Of course you're proud, man, you've made a game so popular that kids across America decided to be giant bird heads for Halloween! In addition to the stats already listed, Angry Birds has had, as Rovio puts it, over 266 billion levels played, 400 billion birds launched, and 44 billion Stars have been collected. If that means nothing to you, you're obviously not a golfer.
Rovio continues to expand their operations with real-world collectables from the games, opening its first retail store in Hesinki soon. There's a cartoon production coming soon (this basically guaranteed after Rovio recently acquired a Helsinki-based animation studio late this year,) and expansions continue to come down the pipe.