So the rumors going around turned out to be true… Sega is officially set to purchase Rovio, the company behind the Angry Birds franchise.
Now I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions about an Angry Birds and Sonic crossover title anytime soon (I also wouldn’t entirely count it out).
But this partnership will strengthen both brands equally and both parties will benefit from eachother’s resources.
Let’s see why Rovio actually has a lot to offer a giant like Sega.
Rovio and Angry Birds
Rovio is a game development studio from Finland that was founded in 2003.
The company currently has over 500 employees and has an estimated value of over $650 million.
You would know Rovio for their smash hit title Angry Birds. Who made an appearance on our list of the best Star Wars games on Nintendo Wii (of all lists for it to appear on).
On the Rovio Wiki page, they literally list their games as “Angry Birds” and “Other Games”. So it’s pretty obvious to everybody that Angry Birds is their bread-and-butter brand.
It is worth noting that the brand did develop over 50 game titles before Angry Birds. But also worth noting that probably none of us have heard of any of those.
If you count all of the spinoffs and brand collaboration iterations of Angry Birds, there’s nearly 80 games under that banner.
There was even the 2016 Angry Birds movie produced by Columbia Pictures and Rovio Animation.
Not the best movie ever made, but it did gross $352.3 million worldwide. Big enough for a sequel too.
And with all of the licensing rights to the Angry Birds brand going to Sega, that surely helps the case for spending so much money for Rovio.
Sega Purchasing Rovio
So how much did Sega pay to purchase Rovio?
Well rumors were saying it was gonna be over one billion.
But the official numbers were just a bit lower at €706 million ($775 million usd). Not like that’s an underwhelming number, by any means.
The deal is officially agreed by Sega and Rovio both, and it should be finalized by September.
One question you might be asking yourself is why would a gaming giant like Sega need somebody like Rovio on their team? Is the Angry Birds brand that beneficial to Sega?
Well, to answer that question, yes… it probably is. Angry Bird surely pulls in a ton of money with all of their mobile presence.
And that seems to be the number one goal in this deal: to strengthen Sega’s mobile presence.
While Sega does have a position on the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, we can’t imagine Football Manager 2023, a bunch of Sonic games, and a few “other”s really pulling them in the big bucks.
At least not that Angry Bird big bucks.
So good on you, Sega. Good to recognize when a company clearly knows what they are doing, and say heck with it… let’s bring them on the team!
Conclusions
With any acquisition, there’s gonna be some angry birds who do not necessarily like the idea of a brand they love being purchased by bigger brands.
But it seems like lately people are starting to see the positive in a brand acquisition for everybody involved.
We recently got confirmation that Atari is officially acquiring Nightdive Studios, and Nightdive seemed quite happy to fall under the strong umbrella of a brand with staying power.
Surely Rovio knows that partnering with Sega can benefit them. And Sega knows that Rovio has a lot to offer too.
The players win too – We get cool future game projects from a couple of our favorite brands, now strengthened by a new partnership.
