Sega Agrees To Buy ‘Angry Birds’ Developer Rovio Entertainment For $706M

Japan’s Video game developer Sega Sammy Holdings, the company behind Sonic the Hedgehog, is buying Rovio Entertainment in a cash deal that values the creator of Angry Birds at €706 million ($774 million).

Rovio has said Angry Birds was the first mobile game to be downloaded one billion times, and the brand has also produced two Angry Birds movies.

Sega is seeking to tap into Rovio’s expertise in mobile gaming.

Last year, Rovio – which has about 550 employees across its eight game studios around the world – said downloads across its stable of games had reached five billion.

The company’s prime asset, Angry Birds, which launched in 2009, became the first mobile game series to reach 1 billion downloads, according to Guinness World Records.

The story-based puzzle video game has players launching “Angry Birds” from a slingshot at a fortress containing pigs who stole their eggs. The game has evolved into a successful franchise with animations, merchandise and theme parks.

Alexandre Pelletier-Normand, CEO of Rovio, who said he grew up playing Sonic the Hedgehog, predicted “an incredibly exciting future” in combining the strengths of the game makers.

The acquisition is part of Sega’s five-year strategy to invest up to €1.7 billion ($1.9 billion), with a focus on growing its mobile gaming businesses.

“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,” said Haruki Satomi, the CEO of Sega Sammy Holdings.

“I feel blessed to be able to announce such a transaction with Rovio, a company that owns ‘Angry Birds’, which is loved across the world, and home to many skilled employees that support the company’s industry leading mobile game development and operating capabilities,” he added.

Sega said it would use Rovio’s “distinctive know-how in live service mobile game operation” to help bring its own current and new titles to the global mobile gaming market.

It highlighted Rovio’s mobile gaming platform, Beacon, which it said had “20 years of high-level expertise in live service-mobile game operation” in the US and Europe.

“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,” said Haruki Satomi, chief executive of Sega Sammy Holdings.