Angry Birds posts

Chillingo closed a huge deal with EA yesterday (becoming the second big iPhone publisher in as many weeks to be picked up), but the company's work with its biggest title apparently left a bad taste in the mouth of the developers, Rovio Mobile. That company tells TechCrunch that they'll never work with Chillingo, or any publisher, again. That's not so much a reflection on Chillingo, though, as it is on Rovio's success -- Peter Vesterbacka says that with the way the App Store is set up, you just "don't need publishers" any more.

For a lot of iPhone developers, I would disagree -- Chillingo has put together a nice set of iPhone titles over the past few years, and seeing their name on an iPhone game can give a nice boost in profile to a developer just starting out. Obviously EA agrees -- while this doesn't mean we'll see EA start taking advantage of the Angry Birds license (necessarily -- I'm sure Rovio is poking around in as many places as possible to recreate the Angry Birds game on other platforms), it does mean that EA is getting access to a significant amount of experience in creating, publishing, and marketing iPhone games. Chillingo seems to have a talent for finding titles of solid quality that are willing to experiment a little bit, so this should bring us some more EA games that are outside of the standard Madden/Need for Speed/Tiger Woods ilk.

As an iPhone user, I'm excited about both the Chillingo and the Ngmoco deals recently -- both will create more options for two iPhone publishers who have made a solid name for themselves, as well as bring a little more standing to the platform at large as a great place to publish and release great games. Rovio's done with iPhone publishers, but the rest of us are just getting started.

Just like Doodle Jump, another big-name App Store game is getting in the Halloween spirit. Angry Birds Halloween is now available on the App Store. It's a US$0.99 "special edition" of Angry Birds with 45 Halloween-themed levels, which are complete with "scary" backgrounds and pumpkins for you to smash.

Unlike the Doodle Jump "Doodlestein" update, Angry Birds Halloween is a totally separate app from Angry Birds, so even if you own the original Angry Birds, you'll still have to pay $0.99 for Angry Birds Halloween. But considering how much fun Angry Birds is, another buck for 45 new levels isn't a whole lot to ask.

The always insightful Stuart Dredge over at MobileEntertainment has crunched some numbers on Game Center's actual popularity. Since Apple's own gaming social network on the iPhone launched, I've heard lots of different things from developers in terms of how they're implementing and using it. Some developers jumped in head-first, bringing all of their apps on board quickly, while others have only brought one or two apps on board at a time, opting instead to wait and see what their users are into. And some developers haven't even started on it yet, instead waiting to see how adoption works.

So, in order to get something resembling hard numbers, Dredge took the reported sales of a few popular App Store apps, and then he compared those to the number of players listed as playing them in Game Center. You can see the top few examples above -- keep in mind that this is a picture painted with a roller rather than a fine brush; it was just created to give an idea of what's happening rather than exact figures.

But there are some conclusions to draw -- a title like Angry Birds, with over 6 million players, is only seeing about a quarter of those users using the Game Center integration. At the same time, a newer title like Cut the Rope has a majority of its players using Game Center. In other words, Game Center is still in the early adopter stage -- the mass market of iPhone users hasn't yet jumped on board. But users who seek out and find the latest and greatest apps (and Cut the Rope is a hit that's only a few weeks old) are signed up and playing on Game Center already.

If there's anything I love to read, it's analysis of the commonplace items in our lives by physicists, engineers, and mathematicians. That's why I was attracted to a recent Wired Dot Physics post by physicist Rhett Allain in which he did a Tracker video analysis of the most important characters in Angry Birds -- the birds.

By using the official Angry Birds walkthrough videos on YouTube with Tracker, Allain was able to determine several important factors -- that the birds exist in a drag-free world (no air resistance), that the sling shot is huge (5 meters -- 16 feet) tall, and the birds are good-sized as well. Y'know that little red bird? He's about 70 cm (27.6 inches) tall. That's a big bird!

To see how Allain used Tracker to plot the horizontal and vertical motion of the birds in flight, follow his analysis, and review his assumptions, be sure check out the original post.

Jeff Scott of 148Apps has finally revealed his App Hall of Fame project -- he started it up about a month ago, and asked a number of personalities around the iPhone/iPad app scene (including yours truly) to nominate and then vote on a few App Store apps, with the eventual goal of inducting them into a Hall of Fame. We made our nominations and voted a little while ago, and the first inductees into the store are now listed on the site: Angry Birds, Flight Control, Doodle Jump, Shazam, Evernote, Plants vs. Zombies, Pandora, Simplenote, the official Twitter app, Instapaper, Homerun Battle 3D, and Fieldrunners. You've probably heard of all of those already, but that's the point: the Hall of Fame aims to honor "the very best mobile applications and games."

There will be 12 inductees honored every month going forward, so the collection should grow bigger pretty fast. The nomination process is all done by the selection committee (not the public), but if you want to follow along, you can sign up on the mailing list (and have a chance to win some of the nominees for free every month). It's a fun project -- the App Store has been around long enough now that some super popular apps have risen to the top, and this is a good way to keep track of the absolute cream of the crop over the App Store's whole life. At the same time, I'm sure we'll see some interesting decisions in the months to come, so stay tuned for that.

At every one of these gaming shows (it's GDC Online this week, which I'm at for TUAW), there's usually a "game of the show" that emerges. It's something, either on the show floor or demoing behind closed doors, that everyone starts to talk about. The buzz starts at parties and in the hallways, and then it carries over into panels and starts to crop up in those casual discussions about "what you've seen this week." But so far, the game everyone's talking about this week isn't even on display at the show. Epic's Mark Rein even recommended Chillingo's newest title, Cut the Rope, to me. It's a brand new game that's already making a huge splash this week (as of this writing, it was number two on the App Store paid list), and it's all the rage among app developers and journalists here at GDC.

The phrase being passed around is "Angry Birds meets Fruit Ninja," and those comparisons are apt. The idea is that you guide a little piece of candy, by cutting ropes and manipulating other items in the environment, to a cute little monster that's hungrily trying to eat it. Cut the Rope has the cute characters of Angry Birds and the fun, tactile interaction of Fruit Ninja all wrapped up into one extremely polished and shiny package. For only US$0.99, you get four stages full of levels, three stars to collect in each level (to add replayability), and to top it all off, Game Center integration for achievements and leaderboards. The iPad version is $1.99, but there's also a lite version on that device to check out.

I'm not even that big of an Angry Birds fan, but I found myself giggling as I pulled off Cut the Rope's little puzzles. I was very charmed by Om Nom, the little monster who just wants that hanging candy. Cut the Rope has just barely gone live, and this is an app that is already getting into people's heads.

Saving Private Sheep is a fun one, especially if you like Angry Birds (and there are plenty of you out there who do). Saving Private Sheep is another physics-based puzzler. This time, instead of throwing birds at pigs, you have to save sheep from wolves by tapping various wooden objects in a scene and blowing them up to try and land the pentagonal sheep safely on the ground. It may sound confusing, but once you play the game (which you can do in a free trial), it makes much more sense.

The game's 80 levels will have you exploding crates, breaking ice, dropping pulleys, tossing objects around, and trying to earn as many gold medals as you can (by exploding as few items as possible as quickly as possible). And the best part is that the game's on sale for just 99 cents right now. It's not exactly the same as Angry Birds, but the game has a very Angry Birds-style feel to it, so if you like that one, give this one a shot as well.

If you're an Angry Birds player like me, you've hit a couple of levels you've had to play 10 or more times before finally being able to progress. Curse those speedy yellow birds! Give me more bombers! If that's you, Rovio Mobile -- creator of Angry Birds -- has the solution to your frustration, which it announced recently at the Nokia World conference. But the bad news is that it's going to cost you.

Meet the new, angriest of the Angry Birds: Mighty Eagle. Via an in-app purchase (with real money) of a can of sardines, you'll be able to summon this new bird for a one-time shot at clearing an entire level. If you want to make use of Mighty Eagle again, you can try going back to the previous level where he was used and clear it without him. Then, voila -- you can use him again in a later level.

Check out the video introducing Mighty Eagle in the 2nd half of the post.

As you might have noticed if you've added a few friends in Apple's new Game Center service, the backbone social components are working great. But where, exactly, are all of the games? Developers have actually had access to Apple's service for quite a while now -- it was introduced to them under NDA way back at WWDC. But for some reason, Apple seems to be waiting on approving Game Center-enabled games.

Fortunately, they're coming, probably as soon as Apple can approve them. Touch Arcade forum member Project-79 has been keeping track of which games have said that they'll be Game Center-enabled. As soon as updates roll out for games like Field Runners, Flight Control, Super Mega Worm and Angry Birds, you'll be able to jump in and earn achievements with them.

Keep in mind that some of the best games on Game Center are still to come: Gameloft's Dungeon Hunter 2 was leaked via a Game Center screen, and of course we're all waiting to see what Epic Games' Project Sword looks like, ever since it was shown off with full GC functionality at last week's Apple event. There are games coming for Game Center, and they should be here soon.

Update: Apparently Ms. PAC-MAN is the first game to get updated with Game Center support. You might want to wait, though -- we've heard it's not a very good version.

Here's one Angry Birds fan who took things to a whole new level. An industrious fan decided to recreate one of her favorite iPhone games using balls, clay, eggs, slingshots and cardboard boxes for a sort of "live" version of the popular iPhone/iPad game. I sure hope that's not a wick on the top of the big black bird ... or do I?

Meanwhile, everyone's talking about the previously-reported rumors of an Angry Birds movie. Variety recently spoke with Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio, creator of Angry Birds, where he talked about the success of the game and a short word on a probable sequel.

Add to all of this that Angry Birds is slated to hit the Sony PSP, PS3 and the Nintendo DS. Is it possible we'll get sick of all this Angry Birds-ness before it's allowed to become as big as Hed hopes? The title is certainly primes for moving in more directions, so long as Hed gets the ball rolling quickly.

There's no questioning that the iPhone/iPad game Angry Birds is a huge success. The company is close to seven million downloads of the game, all without any direct advertising of their own.

Now the company that developed the game, Rovio, is taking a serious look into more commercial avenues for the title, including movies. The company has already done a great job with the animation within the product, including a cinematic trailer released on YouTube (which I guess you could say is technically advertisement -- check it out after the jump). But is there enough to this to make for a good story?

According to Rovio, the company has been approached by several very interested parties, including movie studios, and they're giving all offers serious consideration. Chief exec Mikael Hed has grand ambitions to see the Angry Birds brand become much more than games, akin to Pixar with Toy Story, so games and movies would just be the tip of the iceberg.

Do you think something like Angry Birds could translate well enough to other mediums? Is there a potential story in there worth developing?

Apple seems to be taking a step towards trying to combat app piracy, while making App Store customers happier about their purchases.

A new section in the App Store touts the free, "Lite" versions of many popular apps. These versions have been around for a while and have always been free, but this is the first time that Apple has marketed the apps directly. Not only is there a whole new section called "Free on the App Store," but the Lite versions of popular are now listed in a "Try Before You Buy" area. The idea is that if you try out an app and like it, you'll be more likely to purchase the app, and once it's purchased, less likely to try to get a refund from Apple and the developer.

There are 98 free titles listed in the new section, including Lite versions of Angry Birds, Labyrinth 2, CoPilot Live Directions, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and DigiDrummer.

[via 9to5Mac]