Angry Birds: 350 million downloads and counting
September 12, 2011: 2:24 PM ETThink the popular game has peaked? These astonishing stats may make you think twice.
From left: Pandora's Tony Conrad, Rovio North America General Manager Andrew Stalbow. Photo: JP Mangalindan/Fortune
FORTUNE -- Angry Birds is the game franchise that just keeps on giving.
Some wonder whether the casual video game's popularity has peaked. Rovio's General Manager for North America, Andrew Stalbow, thinks otherwise. Today, Stalbow revealed that there have been 350 million Angry Birds downloads since the game's launch in December 2009. PLayers are putting in an astonishing 300 million minutes of gameplay -- every day. That's 150 million more downloads than when Fortune checked in on Rovio back in June and more than triple the number of downloads reported last March.
More surprising may be how big the merchandise side has become. As of last June, the company had sold three million plush toys, but now Stalbow says they're selling one million a month, in addition to selling one million t-shirts each month.
The news bodes well for Rovio, which is capitalizing on Angry Birds' success in every way possible, with more than 25 ways to get it across multiple platforms -- iOS, Android, Nook, Chrome Web app -- to talks of an Angry Birds movie that would likely be developed in-house thanks to the acquisition of Helsinki-based animation studio Kombo earlier this summer. On the subject of Amazon's (AMZN) reported Kindle tablet, due out later this year, Stalbow wouldn't confirm an app, but given the companies' close relationship -- the two collaborated on the exclusive distribution of Angry Birds Rio -- Rovio's presence on the new platform seems inevitable, sooner rather than later.
And as we'd previously reported, expect two new Angry Birds experiences by the end of the year with new kinds of gameplay entirely unlike the current crop using buzzy new features like geolocation, something the company is tinkering with to draw foot traffic to stores and restaurants. In other words, there's lots more to come.
