To improve Sega’s presence on mobile
First, let’s address the obvious: as previously noted, the acquisition of Rovios is another instance of a console and PC publisher entering the mobile market by acquisition.
Nevertheless, it’s crucial to keep in mind that Sega has prior experience in the mobile industry. Actually, Super Monkey Ball for iOS was one of the App Store’s debut titles back in 2008, just before the original Angry Birds came out and vastly outperformed it.
“I was so sad,” Satomi joked. “However, I can still recall how it felt to see everyone playing Angry Birds.” For this reason, we’re ecstatic about the prospect of Rovio joining the Sega family and collaborating with us on business ventures.
“From a strategic perspective, Sega has a great opportunity to grow its company in the international market.” Our goal is to gain new insights from Rovio’s superior development and management skills. We at Sega think that by expanding into the international market, we’ll be able to see even more substantial growth. From left to right in the picture are Kim Ignatius, Haruki Satomi, Shuji Utsumi, and Alexandre Pelletier-Normand.
“On the Rovio side, we’ve spent the last 20 years developing and operating mobile games,” Pelletier-Normand continued. We’re thrilled about the prospect of working with Sega to grow their intellectual property and reach more players in the worldwide mobile gaming market. “.
Later on, he hinted that Rovio might be more actively involved than just providing support in bringing Sega IP to mobile devices, even though no firm plans have been made.
“Over the years, Sega has created a sizable number of extremely deep and rich intellectual properties.” The mobile gaming market today is very competitive. Having the Angry Birds brand recognized globally has been a huge advantage for us. Over the years, we have developed expertise in maintaining this brand, which has aided us in acquiring new users. It excites us to consider what more Sega can accomplish with other brands in addition to Angry Birds when we consider the brands the company has built over the years. “.
To make use of Rovio’s Beacon technology
Beacon is Rovio’s platform for managing mobile development, publishing, updates, live operations, user acquisitions, and more, and it was mentioned in the original acquisition announcement. According to Pelletier-Normand, the SDK allows the company’s development teams to access these essential features so they can focus on the games themselves.
Every team that embarks on a project can really concentrate on the core game, with Beacon taking care of the rest, because it truly aids in the development and scaling of those games. We have the resources and personnel necessary to effectively assist our creation teams. “.
That’s what Sega is missing, Satomi continued, citing it as one of the things that most impressed Sega during the acquisition. While Rovio has done it on a global scale, we have done it to some extent ourselves. Sega’s decision to incorporate the Beacon system into their current titles will be extremely helpful to us. “.
The most recent instance of a more established gaming company acquiring a major independent mobile game developer is Sega’s acquisition of Rovio. Developer of Candy Crush, King, was purchased by Activision Blizzard for $5 9 billion deal that was finalized in 2016, and Take-Two paid $12 billion to acquire Zynga, the company that created FarmVille. 7 billion last year. Most PopularMost Popular.
Sega, the Japanese-headquartered video game company best known in the West for its Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, is acquiring Angry Birds developer Rovio, the companies announced today. The Finnish headquartered mobile games developer will be acquired for 706 million (around $775 million), which The Wall Street Journal notes represents a roughly a 19 percent premium over its share price at close on Friday. The deal is expected to close by the end of September.
Using “Rovio’s distinctive know-how in live service mobile game operation, to bring Sega’s current and new titles to the global mobile gaming market,” the company stated in a press release. It seems to have a similar goal to what Nintendo, Sega’s rival, has been doing with its franchises, releasing games for smartphones like Super Mario Run, Mario Kart Tour, and Pokémon Go. Furthermore, Sega hopes to assist Rovio in “expanding its platform outside of mobile gaming.” .
According to Haruki Satomi, president and group CEO of Sega parent company Sega Sammy holdings, “among the rapidly growing global gaming market, the mobile gaming market has especially high potential, and it has been Sega’s long-term goal to accelerate its expansion in this field.” Rovio CEO Alexandre Pelletier-Normand singled out the company’s Beacon platform in a statement, emphasizing that it helps create games-as-a-service offerings.
Rovio is best known for its work on the Angry Birds franchise, which launched in 2009 and is claimed to be the first mobile game series to have reached 1 billion downloads. In total, Rovio says its games have been downloaded over 5 billion times. Angry Birds has since been adapted for the big screen twice (once in 2016 and again in 2019), but more recent entries in the franchise have struggled to make a similar impact.
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