By: iPadfanzz staff on March 12, 2013
Finnish gamemaker Rovio has quietly turned its “Angry Birds” game into a mega-franchise across mobile devices, thus making it one of the most lucrative distribution platforms in years. The company has revealed its plans to screen its Angry Birds Toons shorts within its own apps.
That means every mobile device — including Apple, Android and BlackBerry-powered smartphones and tablets — will feature the 52 episodes “Angry Birds Toons” that Rovio has produced, as will Samsung’s smart TVs, and other VOD streaming platforms like Roku.
The game which crossed the 1.7 billion download mark, said it would utilize its mobile distribution plans for its Angry Birds animated cartoon series, which will make its debut on the weekend of March 16-17.
"With over 1.7bn downloads, we can reach a far wider and more engaged global audience than traditional distribution would allow," said chief executive Mikael Hed in a statement.
"Launching the channel, and partnering up with some of the best video-on-demand providers and TV networks, is an important milestone for us on our journey towards becoming a fully fledged entertainment powerhouse."
The consumers will be available to make use of the the Angry Birds Toons channel inside the app from a button on the homescreen. Comcast will carry the channel on its video-on-demand services in the US, as will Samsung's range of connected TVs globally, with Roku set-top boxes to follow.
Networks in Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, India, Finland, Israel, France, Germany, Norway, Chile and Brazil have signed on to air the cartoons, although no UK broadcaster has yet been confirmed as a distribution partner.
Experts term the strategy of Angry Birds to sidestep a traditional distribution channel (read a broadcaster), and release its own original entertainment product is nothing short of remarkable. They say it will certainly help the gamemaker collect more of the revenue generated from the property.
They say it is not at all bad for a gamemaker which is considered to be lucky with a cute sling-shot game involving grunting pigs and squawking animated birds.
The game was first released in December 2009, and recently spun off licensed versions like “Angry Birds Rio,” “Angry Birds Space,” “Angry Birds Star Wars” and “Bad Piggies.”
If that wasn’t massive enough, Comcast will also stream the weekly episodes to subscribers of its Xfinity on Demand service in the U.S., online at Xfinity.com/tv and the Xfinity TV Player app.
