Sega Acquires Angry Birds Developer For $776 Million

SEGA has acquired Finnish Rovio Entertainment, behind the popular Angry Birds mobile games for a total of $776 million.

Rovio Acquired by Sega

Japan Sega Sammy Holdings INC has officially signed a deal to fully acquire the Finnish development studio Rovio Entertainment for a total of $776 million. Rovio are the developer behind the hit mobile game Angry Birds which was the first mobile game to hit 1 billion downloads and even today still holds strong. In a statement Haruki Satomi President and CEO of Sega Sammy Holdings inc said “it has been Sega’s long-term goal to accelerate its expansion in this field (mobile gaming).”

What Will This Entail?

It is unlikely we will see anything come from this until later this year but I imagine we will see a Sonic and Angry Birds spin-off game as well as some new entries into the mobile gaming market from Sega’s popular franchises from Sonic, Yakuza, Company of Heroes and Total War. Most of us reading probably don’t care much about mobile gaming so this likely won’t cause too much of a stir in the PC gaming community but mobile gaming is expected to grow considerably, especially as phones and handhelds become more powerful. One thing I can be assured of is that they won’t bring back the original Angry Birds to the app store, significantly better than the second game.

What do you think of this acquisition? Let us know in the comments.