'Angry Birds' Dominate The Gaming World

Be honest, you know you've got a copy of Angry Birds floating around somewhere in your iPad. According to the latest stats, the high-flying video game app has been downloaded over 350 million times and is now "officially" more popular than Nintendo's famed Mario series.

That's quite a feat considering the app is only two-years old. The brainchild of Finnish gaming company Rovio, Angry Birds was developed for a mere $136,000. Rovio's senior designer Jaakko Iisalo based part of the concept on the swine flu epidemic, which had been dominating the headlines back in 2009. Making birds fly into green sickly pigs seemed like a fun, easy-to-maneuver, time waster.

Little did they know the type of impact this game would have on the world. Rovio is now a billion-dollar company and has created an entire merchandising wing (no pun intended) devoted solely to the Birds. T-shirts, action figures, and plush toys related to the franchise have sold in the millions.

And judging from the latest articles, the Birds epidemic is far from over. Rovio is rumored to be in negotiations with Starbucks about coffee shop gaming devices. They have also set up in-store playing stations at retail outlets like Barnes & Noble, which have proven to be extremely successful.

But that's only the tip of the Angry iceberg. According to CinemaBlend, there may be a Birds movie hitting theaters in the near future. Rovio honcho David Maisel dropped several hints about the project at a recent gaming summit in Hollywood and even discussed the possibility of flying feather heads in 3D!

It all sounds very interesting to us, though we do feel a little sad for Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom. Perhaps if he got Angry enough, Nintendo's famous plumber could stir up heat in the app world and give the Birds some high-flying competition.

Source Michael Lopez

Posted in 2011 angry birds , 2011 best video games , angry birds gamesm , i love angry birds , Jaakko Iisalo , playing angry birds , Rovio