Sonic and Red will be family. Rovio, the Finnish developer who brought Angry Birds to the world, passed into the hands of SEGA. The purchase was defined for 706 million euros, about 775 million dollars.
as you remember xataka, Angry Birds is Rovio’s most precious asset, but the company tried to make other video games succeed, such as Small Town Muders or Sugar Blast. However, the success of the bird game could not be replicated with other titles.
The purchase makes a lot of sense for SEGA, especially as the mobile gaming market continues to rise. The Japanese firm has relied a lot in recent times on arcade machines and pachinko, two products that suffered greatly from the COVID-19 pandemic and its variants.
“It is imperative to continue investing in its game development and operation capabilities, in order to further strengthen its position in this fast-growing global and mobile gaming marketwhich therefore led to the decision to acquire Rovio”, exposed SEGA.
SEGA focuses on mobile
This move by SEGA confirms that the company is focused on mobile phones: “The company intends to leverage Rovio’s mobile game development capabilities and experience in operating mobile games, with the purpose of accelerate the development of mobile-friendly versions and cross-platform of current SEGA gaming IPsthus reinforcing and accelerating the global expansion of the gaming portfolio”.
The Japanese company already has some of its franchises on gamers’ cell phones, such as Sonic The Hedgehog, Crazy Taxi, Virtual Tennis or Football Manager 2023.
SEGA has a lot to gain from this purchase: it will mean an injection of stable income from the microtransactions of the Angry Birds titles, in addition to all the products derived from the franchise, such as movies, series and merchandising.