Rovio recently announced that Angry Birds 2 is swooping in at the end of the month, which is confusingly deemed the sequel of the popular and successful franchise. It’s quite definitely not the first game of its kind to follow the original, so the title of ‘sequel’ might be a little perplexing for most.
Since its first release in 2009, Rovio has launched a number of fifteen other spin-off of Angry Birds that ranged in terms of success, though none came even close to the first game. It was regardless considered the block buster of mobile gaming and has found great popularity worldwide.
Angry Birds expanded far beyond a game, becoming an icon for mobile apps, seeing a number of 2 billion downloads and a total of 3 billion if all the other fifteen spin-offs are taken into account. The phenomenon became a powerful brand name that could stand very well on its own.
Now, you can find them in the form of plush toys, Legos, stickers, varied merchandise, series and even a movie to be released next year. There is no doubt that it has exploded in popularity from the simple physics-based puzzle game it was supposed to be.
And after six years, Rovio is ready to announce an official sequel, simply named Angry Birds 2. The franchise has dabbled into many moderately successful or unsuccessful spin-offs that crossed over with other famous universes, such as Star Wars or Transformers. They dabbled a bit into racing games with Angry Birds Go! and even into role playing with Angry Birds Epic.
The variety didn’t quite help though as Rovio suffered a 73% fall in profits last year. A possibly successful revitalizing of the franchise is both wanted and needed, so perhaps they have rolled up their sleeves and dug themselves into work for the next game.
No details have been shared, which only leaves avid mobile game users with multiple questions. The most popular is definitely ‘What more can they add?’. The previous incarnations and spin-offs have already seen to additional content. Angry Birds Stella brought new characters and every single version comes with its own share of new abilities.
A theory would be that Angry Birds 2 would be better put to use in promoting the upcoming movie, though a good game on its own could achieve that goal just as well. It only remains to be seen if the sequel could raise in popularity as high as the original game, though it would be difficult to match the success.
However, a decent, fresh approach with a swift return to the basics could revitalize the Angry Birds franchise who has drifted quite a bit from its original gameplay. All that we know is that the sequel is promised to be a “bigger, badder, birdier” game.
At the end of the month, a first glance will be offered to the public on July 28th, with its release to follow on July 30th when Rovio will have to kick it out of its nest and see if it can fly.
Image source: n3rdabl3.co.uk
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