The Japanese gaming giant Sega Sammy Holdings announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire the Finnish company Rovio Entertainmentt, known for creating the popular mobile game Angry Birds.
BBC reports that, as part of the deal, Sega will pay 706 million euros to take control of the brand that, in addition to the games, also gave birth to the two films of the franchise. Recall that Angry Birds was the first mobile game to exceed one billion downloads, making Rovio famous all over the world. Despite this, the Finnish company has never been able to replicate this astonishing success with other titles.
In 2020 Rovio, which currently has about 550 employees in its eight development studios around the world, recorded a total of five billion downloads for games in the Angry Birds franchise.
SEGA aims at the mobile market by acquiring Angry Birds
For its part, Sega justified the acquisition by reaffirming the will to “strengthen its position in the global gaming market”. In fact, the company intends to reach 263.3 billion dollars in revenue by 2026, aiming to have 56% of its revenues from mobile games.
The giant also said it plans to leverage Rovio’s “signature know-how in mobile gaming operations” to expand its presence in the global iOS and Android gaming market.
Recall that Sega Sammy is a Japanese global holding company born in 2004 from the merger between the video game giant Sega and Sammy Corporation. The company owns the rights to popular video game franchises (primarily Sonic), but also manages the trademarks of the hugely popular SEGA consoles.