Angry Birds Christmas to be free upgrade to Halloween edition

Rovio: Over 7 Million People Helping Those Angry Birds Out on Android; Christmas Update Coming

Rovio’s been fielding questions on their Twitter account from users in a conversation that went from inquiries about a Christmas add-on to why Angry Birds is free on Android and not on other platforms. Firstly, yes: there will be an update for Android (as well as other platforms) come Christmas time. (Here’s the tweet they responded to the question with.) Many were asking about it because Android was left out of the Halloween update (even though we received a whole new set of levels for free around the same time.)

And when asked why they offer free downloads on Android, they responded “because it’s the Google way.” One user wasn’t having that though: not all games on Android are free. Rovio came back with a very interesting stat, however:

Wait, what? It’s only been a month and a half since the popular game was released on Android and it’s already reached 7 million downloads. (We assume these are numbers from GetJar and the Market combined.) I don’t even want to begin thinking about how much money they’re making from ads, but something tells me they’re quite pleased with how this little experiment has turned out.

As we still experience growing pains in the Android market and as developers try to find more ways to make money, we’ll continue to see freemium and ad-supported models favored over paid downloads. If any developers were toying around with the idea of an ad-supported game, Rovio’s achievements should do well to convince you that it’s worth a shot.

 Rovio’s twitter account is an excellent place to find the latest and greatest news about Angry Birds. Unlike many companies that keep information under wraps and use Twitter as a one-way marketing conversation, Rovio is up front about its future product plans and is engaged in conversation with its followers.

The latest series of tweets confirms that Angry Birds is popular among Android fans, all 7 million of them. When the popular mobile game debuted on Android last month, GetJar went belly up for several hours due to unexpectedly high demand. Demand was so great that Rovio was forced to launch the game in the Android Market earlier than planned.

On its rocky first day of availability, Rovio logged an impressive one million downloads of Angry Birds and demand for this game  has continued to grow. In the six weeks after launch, Angry Birds has now been downloaded more than 7 million times to Android handsets. While impressive, this 7M figure does trail the 10 million paid downloads attributed to iOS. Across all platforms and versions, Angry Birds has been downloaded a staggering 30 million times. That, my friends, is a lot of Angry Birds.

Rovio has taken notice of these 7 million users and has confirmed that Android will receive a special Christmas version of the popular mobile game. This is good news for fans of Google’s mobile OS as Rovio previously left the mobile platform in the dust when it released its iOS-only Halloween edition of Angry Birds. A release date for this Christmas edition was not given but Rovio hinted that it would arrive “any day now”.

 Via Twitter

 

 

 

 

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