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Angry Birds 2 launching later this month for mobile platforms

Danny Cowan
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After countless updates, ports, and spin-offs, Rovio’s landmark mobile hit Angry Birds will at last see a true sequel released later this month, the studio confirmed in a recent teaser video.
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Few details regarding Angry Birds 2 are known, though the teaser hints that gameplay will feature the same pig-bopping, crate-busting gameplay of its physics-driven forebears.

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Originally released in 2009, Angry Birds took the iOS App Store by storm, selling 12 million copies in the year after its launch. The game spawned a singular empire on iOS devices, with the core app and spinoff Angry Birds Seasons topping platform sales charts for many consecutive months. Finnish developer Rovio supported both apps with frequent content-expanding updates, keeping its franchise at the forefront of the App Store marketplace.

Angry Birds saw its first licensed release in 2011 with Angry Birds Rio, a popular puzzler based on an animated film. Follow-ups like Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Transformers continued the trend in recent years.

Developer Rovio later explored new genres with apps like 2013’s racing game Angry Birds Go! and 2014’s turn-based RPG Angry Birds Epic. The 2012 spinoff Bad Piggies inverted the series’ traditional structure, challenging players to build vehicles that ensure safe passage for the Angry Birds’ pig antagonists.

Angry Birds entered the console realm with 2012’s Angry Birds Trilogy, a compilation featuring a trio of previously released apps. Angry Birds Star Wars later premiered as a launch title for the PlayStation 4 in North America in 2013.

Fan speculation suggests that Angry Birds 2 is a retitled version of Angry Birds Under Pigstruction, which soft-launched in Canada earlier this year. Under Pigstruction seems to feature the same cast of characters seen in early promotional images for Angry Birds 2, hinting at a possible rebranding. Under Pigstruction‘s Wikipedia page has already been updated to indicate that it is in fact Angry Birds 2, which seems to verify the theory. That game utilized essentially the same bird-launching gameplay as previous titles, with the addition of a new silver bird and spells like summoning blizzards or a rain of rubber ducks.

Angry Birds 2 will premiere for Android and iOS mobile platforms on July 30.

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Danny Cowan
Danny Cowan
Contributor
Danny’s passion for video games was ignited upon his first encounter with Nintendo’s Duck Hunt, and years later, he still…
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Sega Sammy Holdings, the parent company of game developer and publisher Sega, has announced its intention to acquire Rovio, the Finnish studio behind the Angry Birds franchise, for $776 million.
This acquisition was spearheaded by the Sega Europe branch of the company, which has also acquired game developers like Creative Assembly and Amplitude Studios. This seemed like a surprising acquisition when the reports about it first emerged, but Sega confirmed the deal and revealed its reasoning for it in a press release. Namely, it says that this deal will allow Sega "to further strengthen its position in this fast-growing mobile and global gaming market."

Sega loves the extremely strong foothold Rovio has in the live service mobile game space thanks to Angry Birds and its game operation platform Beacon. Because of this, Sega can bring many of its series to mobile with the help of Rovio, while Rovio can "expand its platform outside of mobile gaming" with the help of Sega. The press release also makes it clear that Sega and Rovio will continue pushing the presence of Sonic the Hedgehog and Angry Birds, respectively, outside of gaming and can exchange notes and work together as part of that process.
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