Angry Birds: Sega is of the same opinion to buy online game maker Rovio

By Maggie Last updated Apr 17, 2023

The maker of Angry Birds video games has agreed to be bought by using the Japanese gaming giant in the back of the Sonic the Hedgehog character.

Japan’s Sega Sammy Holdings is paying €706m (£625m) for Finland-based totally Rovio entertainment.

Rovio has stated irritated Birds changed into the first cellular recreation to be downloaded a thousand million instances, and the emblem has also produced two indignant Birds films.

Sega is searching to tap into Rovio’s understanding of cellular gaming.

In the final year, Rovio – which has about 550 employees throughout its 8 game studios around the arena – stated downloads throughout its stable of games had reached 5 billion.

Announcing the deal, Sega stated its selection to buy Rovio was pushed by using the want to “beef up its position” within the international gaming market.

It stated this marketplace is projected to grow to $263.3bn with the aid of 2026, with the share of cell gaming predicted to boom to fifty six%.

Sega said it would use Rovio’s “one-of-a-kind understanding in live carrier mobile game operation” to assist deliver its own modern-day and new titles to the worldwide cell gaming market.

It highlighted Rovio’s cellular gaming platform, Beacon, which it stated had “20 years of excessive-degree expertise in live service-cellular game operation” in the US and Europe.

“Most of the unexpectedly growing international gaming market, the cell gaming marketplace has particularly high capacity, and it has been Sega’s lengthy-term goal to accelerate its expansion in this field,” stated Haruki Satomi, chief executive of Sega Sammy Holdings.

“I sense blessed with the intention to announce this type of transaction with Rovio, a corporation that owns ‘angry Birds’, which is loved the world over, and domestically to much skilled personnel that guide the organization’s enterprise leading cell game development and running skills,” he introduced.

Edward James, an analyst at Berenberg, stated Rovio became an “attractive asset” because it owns “one of the great and strongest manufacturers in cellular games” in Angry Birds.

He delivered that the Beacon cellular gaming platform turned into “very beneficial” for Sega.

“Given the scale of the irritated Birds franchise and the lengthy duration nature of the titles, the depth of records and know-how of the Beacon platform is pretty precious and close to on not possible for Sega to build from scratch, as a minimum in a reasonable time body.”

Rovio’s revenues improved to €317.7m in 2022 from €272.3m in 2020, however over the identical duration its working profits have fallen from €42.5m to €28.6m.

Rovio had an inventory market valuation of $707m (£571m) by means of the near of buying and selling on Friday, but stocks within the business enterprise jumped with the aid of nearly 18% on Monday after the cope with Sega became agreed.

Sega Sammy is an eastern global maintaining agency formed through the merger in 2004 of the video game massive Sega and Sammy Corporation.

Sega has produced several multi-million-promoting online game franchises and is thought globally for its Sonic the Hedgehog character, which has also been featured in two films.

Sammy develops and sells leisure arcade machines.