Sega Acquires Rovio for $776 Million
Sega Sammy has successfully acquired Rovio, the developer behind Angry Birds, after paying a hefty sum of $776 million. The deal, which was initially proposed in April, faced some finalization and regulatory challenges before being finalized. Sega aims to strengthen its presence in the mobile industry through this acquisition, even though the peak popularity of Angry Birds occurred nearly 15 years ago.
However, Rovio is not just one IP address. In addition to Angry Birds and its many spinoff games, the company is known for the match-three puzzle game Sugar Blast and the narrative mystery title Small Town Murders. Okay, these aren’t exactly high-profile IPs, but Sega is getting something more than recognizable franchise titles with this purchase. It gets a ready-made infrastructure for developing, publishing and promoting mobile games. This means it can hit the ground running when making mobile games on its own IPs, such as Sonic, Samba de Amigo, Persona, Football Manager and others. There are also hundreds of older games just waiting for mobile ports.
CEO Haruki Satomi said back in April that “the mobile gaming market has particularly high potential, and Sega’s long-term goal has been to accelerate its expansion in this area.”
In addition to Sega’s previous games in the franchise, the company is likely to continue making more Angry Birds mobile games. Despite losing some of its late 2000s luster, Angry Birds is still a pretty hot commodity, with movies, TV shows, and even the odd restaurant in New York. Perhaps pairing these annoyed birds with a certain blue hedgehog will bring the one-off cell phone back into the collective consciousness. Now who will throw Knuckles to the pigs?
