Angry Birds Rio 1.2.2 este disponibil incepand din aceasta seara in App Store, dezvoltatorii jocului implementand nu mai putin de 15 nivele noi pentru jucatori. Update-ul contine si cateva bug fix-uri pentru versiunea precedenta dar si achievment-uri noi plus un Boss fight. Angry Birds Rio a fost special conceput pentru filmul artistic Rio care a fost lansat in primavara acestui an iar jocul din App Store este disponibil pentru doar 0.79€ pentru iPhone/iPod Touch.
Trecand peste update, va reamintesc faptul ca saptamana ceasta EA Games a achizitionat compania Pop Cap Games pentru 650 de milioane de dolari cash, 100 de milioane de dolari in actiuni plus inca 550 de milioane de dolari care ar urma sa fie platiti daca vor fi atinse anumite praguri de vanzari. CEO-ul Rovio a dezvalui ca EA Games si alte cateva companii au fost interesate de achizitia Rovio si a jocului Angry Birds insa anul trecut CEO-ul Rovio a refuzat sa vanda compania iar anul acesta considera ca valoarea ei este mai mare decat cea a Pop Cap Games. Desi are doar un joc, Rovio pregateste alte cateva proiecte interesante in afara industriei jocurilor dar nu va temeti, vom avea si destule noutati pentru Angry Birds. Iata ce a declarat pentru Eurogamer CEO-ul Rovio :
I wouldn’t say EA has approached us with any offer – obviously we’ve discussed with many different companies,” Heijari informed Eurogamer.
About a year ago, in the summer of 2010, Angry Birds was already quite successful. At that point it started to look like a really, really feasible and desirable IP. So we had a lot of enquiries from many, many different parties. But we’ve had an overall strategic goal of growing this company and moving into different areas of business beyond games. I don’t think there’s ever been a really relevant discussion of whether somebody is going to buy us. Of course like any business if the price is right, ha!” he exclaimed. But we’ve set the bar pretty high from early on, because we really think we have a lot of opportunities with our Angry Birds IP and there’s a lot of creativity at the studio beyond Angry Birds. It was never a strategy here to quickly cash in on anybody who comes waving a wad of cash our way. “But the valuation from our point of view is somewhere, I dunno, maybe north of PopCap.
A lot of people look at our game and say, “Who do these guys think they are with their one title?” There’s a lot of different stuff going on, we have a lot of different stuff in the pipepine. We already have quite a big reach with this one title. We want to now leverage that reach and bring more social experiences, more delightful games to an already established audience. Not to say milk the Angry Birds titles as long as they can go, but really create sustainable characters and sustainable property and build a really massive brand out of Angry Birds.
It is an awful lot of money!” said Heijari of the $1.3 billion deal. “But then if you consider where the growth is at the moment, obviously consoles are not dying, PC gaming isn’t going to disappear overnight – the growth right now, the dynamic, is in the social and mobile gaming.
EA have definitely taken, I wouldn’t say aggressive, but quite bold steps towards gaining more foothold in new domains to them. I don’t see this as either negative or positive, it’s obviously a really, really strategic move from EA.
If you look at the valuation – Zynga is aiming for $1 billion IPO. PopCap already has a lot of really successful titles that are still going strong, a massive catalogue of titles [and is] probably not going to slow down in creating new games either. I dunno, if the price is right for EA, ha ha, then it must be right!
These kind of price tags just go to show that the value is also perceived.
