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Angry Birds Downloads Pass Half-Billion Mark
bdking writes "The most popular mobile game in history now has been downloaded more than 500,000,000 times, according to maker Rovio Mobile. Good thing the 300 million minutes of Angry Birds daily playing time around the world aren't being wasted or anything. Rovio chief executive Mikael Hed says: 'This is a fantastic landmark achievement for us, and we’re extremely delighted to see such an incredible amount of people enjoying our games. We remain committed to creating more fun experiences and bringing exceptional quality to Angry Birds Fans everywhere.'"
How many commas are in a "Half-Billion"? I think there's more than one...maybe we should ask the pigs.
We're using Congressional accounting, just round everything up to the nearest billion.
Good to know the submitter doesn't know how to count to a billion.
The submitter is just quoting TFA.
I thought it was as mediocre then as it is now. Am I the only one who just doesn't get the popularity of this game? It reminds me of the late 90's/early 2000's Snood craze, where for no apparent reason the entire world became completely obsessed with a random, mediocre puzzle game.
I think you mean Castle Clout.
500,000,000 downloads... 300,000,000 minutes... 0.6 minutes played per download?
These numbers must include trials and people re-downloading on new phones. I'd be more interested in the number who have PURCHASED Angry Birds.
The first few levels were somewhat entertaining when I was riding the metro in DC, but after 30 or so stages, it quickly became tedious. I, too, do not understand the popularity.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
I have to agree, to me it seems like an average quality flash game, good for killing a bit of time, that just happened to hit the smartphone market at just the right time to have people talking about it. After that it's popularity grew because it was already popular. Personally I wish a more original game made it to that timing, say world of goo or something along those lines.
Chiming in on the don't get it sentiment. It becomes very repetitive, very fast, which to me equates to boredom. Perhaps the popularity is related to simple minds being amused by simple things?
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
"Seige Hero" is another that is similar to CtC though instead of being a side view, it's a head on view.
Does this include all of the Angry Birds games or only the original? Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio (and possibly others)? I've got all 3 and they have been well worth the buck entry fee. Their continual addition of new levels makes it one of the best values out there for games.
And can we seriously stop with the 50 posts and reposts about some typo in the summary?
Because you are new to games, and don't know what to play, and everybody seems to play this thing called "angry birds".
Because it is the cool crowd who plays it.
Because it is like that popular tv show (enter name) that everyone seems to like, so you have to seem to like it to blend in
Because you just finished Demon's Souls and you need to play something "light"
Because he plays it (if you are a girl)
This should cover 500mil people.
Consider how much investment you want from a developer to entertain you while you poop? Personally I wouldn't be willing to pay for a game that only gets my attention during that period of the day. So having said that, why should the developer try to create the next big blockbuster with an enormous amount of development time to capture the same market that they'd capture by developing a mini-game?
If you're getting these free games to occupy an hour or so of your free time and complaining about repetitiveness I think you need to reevaluate what you spend your time with because these games aren't supposed to make you want to book time out of your day to play them like console games with multiplayer and the like are.
You are part of that metric then. It doesn't mean that half a billion people like the game, only that there were half a billion downloads. Likely a lot of those were bored people who played a little and then stopped.
Chicky . . . SMASH!
I don't think the 300 million minutes are wasted by any means. I babysit for my brother and while I love both of his children, there does come a point in the night where I can no longer be a human jungle-gym, or the big bad monster, or the wrestling star (they're very active kids) and I need to sit for a few minutes. The only way to get those kids (ages 3 and 5) to sit still is to give them my phone with angry birds. They are suddenly quiet and, of all things, polite! They know that if they fight over the phone that it will get taken away, so instead they ask nicely for a turn, help one another on stages they can't complete, and - more importantly - let me catch my breath!
Sure, it's easy to be a hater. But you got to give those guys props that they created something fun enough that both me and my four year old daughter find fun at the same time. Easy to play, a little tougher to master, and you can pick it up for minutes or hours at a time.
Whether you like it or not, Angry Birds is at least or more socially relevant than anything else that's come out in consumer market - app or web-based - in the past year or so. Good to see that crossover hits like this can be done.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I thought it was as mediocre then as it is now. Am I the only one who just doesn't get the popularity of this game?
Actually, I've still never seen it (living in Finland with several Android smartphones in the house, and a variety of smartphones at work). I'm willing to believe it's mediocre or a lot worse than mediocre.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Good thing the 300 million minutes of Angry Birds daily playing time around the world aren't being wasted or anything.
Ah, of course. The summary wouldn't be complete without a snide dig at the mainstream. Cause geeks would never waste time playing a game after all.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I seem to recall reading in the early '80s that Rogue was responsible for over $1Billion in wasted computer time.
I wonder how much Angry Birds would be if they still charged for CPU usage.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I don't think the 300 million minutes are wasted by any means.
I think the AB haters are really funny. Most of the people I have meet that think its a stupid game are 'hard-core' gamers that are too cool for that sort of silliness. The amusing thing is AB is just a graphically updated version of the old games we used to play on c64 and apple ][e, where you selected an angle and velocity for your cannon, and fired a projectile at a target over polynomial generated mountains.
Just because its is launching funny looking bird sprites rather than spiky cannon balls, it is somehow less engaging of a physics simulation....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
How many times it was re downloaded due to new phones and after factory restores of different phones. For one I would not waste phone/sd card space when I can easily download it again. I know I have downloaded it a good 5-10 times over the few years it has been out due to the above reasons.
"That's right...I said it."
I've always wondered since I got my first iPod Touch if multiple downloads of the same item were counted in these statistics.
For example, I have personally downloaded Angry Birds ten times but only purchased it once. What happens is that iTunes on my computer downloads the "Update" and my iPod Touch also downloads the same "Update" independently.
Does that count as two downloads or one?
Kriston
I refuse to waste my time on Angry Birds. I'm waiting for someone to port Lemmings to iOS.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Nope. I tried it, and imho most of the iterations of Worms are much better for games of that genre.
But that's just me, I played Worms since the original, and I played many of their predecessors. Other then graphics, the whole "physics based catapulting game" is nothing new to me.
This gives me ideas. A game where you shoot poop into toilets. While sitting on a toilet pooping.
That Angry Birds has managed to achieve such popularity, even among mainstream non/casual gamers, without any of the media's paranoic talking heads getting worked up about it.
Let's be clear here, cutesy graphics and sounds aside, the game is about a bunch of birds, enraged at their dispossession by the pigs, launching martyrdom operations against the pigs and their infrastructure. You lose unless the pigs are exterminated and you get extra points for each infrastructure element destroyed. Surely that should have been enough for a hysterical article on the WorldNetDaily, or an ongoing conspiracy subthread over at freerepublic concerning the question of whether Angry Birds is objectively pro terror?
I thought it was as mediocre then as it is now. Am I the only one who just doesn't get the popularity of this game?
I agree completely. I download a lot of IOS games, and this one is probably not quite as good as the average weekly release from Donut Games. I think the marketing for Angry Birds has been better, so I guess I'm not completely puzzled by the success, but I'm still a bit shocked by it.
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That idea is just stupid enough to be a massive hit.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I love Pomplamoose's cover of the Theme Music. Such Fun!
Chiming in on the don't get it sentiment. It becomes very repetitive, very fast, which to me equates to boredom. Perhaps the popularity is related to simple minds being amused by simple things?
The whole point about games like Angry Birds is that you can pick them up and play for ten minutes or half an hour. Most people don't get bored that quickly. You aren't going to sit down and play for ten hours at a time like you no doubt do with World of Warcraft.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Its a puzzle game. People like puzzles, even though its the same process over and over again. Also, you don't appear to find being a douche to be too simple or boring for your taste. To each his own...
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Having never played World of Goo, I don't know much about it. I tried to find it on the Android Market, but it isn't there, is it a game that would lend itself well to a phone? I wonder how many sales the dev would have if he ported it over.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
It's an indi PC game, by 2Dboy, I don't think they've even ported to the smartphone market, it is available for windows linux and mac http://2dboy.com/games.php, from what I've played of it I could see it working very well on a tablet, I'm not sure about on a phone (may be a bit too small)
There are 16 million users in the high score chart visible on iPhone. Are those including Android and other platforms? And of course there are those that never had Internet connectivity. Still, 500 millions sounds very far fetched.
Just passing the levels is easy, mostly. But getting three stars on a level usually requires strategic thinking. That, combined with the fact that you don't have to commit to play for more than about 30 seconds at a time seem make Angry Birds a winner with lasting entertainment potential.
I'm writing this because I was actually quite surprised at how well the game works. I dismissed it as a fad for quite some time. But ultimately it was much more fun than I thought it would be.
.: Max Romantschuk