Japanese gaming publisher Sega announced on Monday that it will buy the company behind the smartphone one-hit wonder Angry Birds for $775 million. It’s the latest major gaming acquisition, and one of the strangest yet.
We got a first taste of the deal a report from The Wall Street Journal On April 15, this indicated that Sega could buy Rovio for as much as $1 billion. Discussions over the weekend appear to have reduced that number by a few hundred million, and now the two companies have done so announced an official agreementand called it a “friendly takeover”.
Sega argues that the deal will help it bring its existing franchises to mobile and help Rovio bring its games to other platforms. Both companies have also experimented with transmedia spin-offs, most notably in Hollywood, where Sonic and Angry Birds have both resulted in profitable film adaptations. “Among the fast-growing global gaming market, the mobile gaming market has particularly high potential, and it has been SEGA’s long-term goal to accelerate its expansion in this space,” said Haruki Satomi, President and Group CEO of the parent company of Sega a press release.
Continue reading: Angry Birds Game pulled from the store in the worst possible way
The deal follows a series of key acquisition announcements as the video game industry consolidates, particularly those aimed at helping companies capture a larger chunk of the massive mobile games market. Microsoft is Buy Activision Blizzard ($69 billion) what makes call of Duty
Mobile gaming has never replaced PC and console gaming, but it’s still huge. Apple’s gaming revenue from the App Store in 2021 alone was valued at over $15 billion. And despite being one of the oldest mobile gaming hits at this point, Angry Birds Sequels and Spinoffs keep making money.
At the same time, Sega isn’t nearly as big as some of these other players (its total market cap is less than the Scopely deal) and making successful mobile games is a lot harder than just grafting familiar faces onto clones of whatever hits the charts leads . Electronic Arts recently cans both his battlefield
Coincidentally, 2023 marks the tenth anniversary Sega buys JRPG powerhouse Atlus for just $140 million. That’s about half of what Embracer paid recently to grab them deus ex And Tomb Raider studios by SquareEnix. We’ll see who buys who next. In the meantime, I can’t wait to see what crazy ways Sega comes up with to integrate it Angry Birds into the next Sonic game.