With 250 Million Downloads Angry Birds Moves Into Magic, Cookbooks, And More | TechCrunch
Cached copy of an article from TechCrunch, June 2011, 2011, served from ramine.net so it stays readable if the original goes offline.
10:34 AM PDT · June 14, 2011
Last night at the Webby awards, two little birds told me some interesting news about Angry Birds. Okay, it was actually a Mighty Eagle, founder Peter Vestebacka, and one of his product managers, Ramine Darabiha. The Angry Birds games now have been downloaded _250 million times_ across all mobile platforms.
So what’s next for Angry Birds? Vestebecka says that they are working on a new game called _Wine and Dine_ and a cookbook which will feature egg recipes. But the most what piqued my ears the most was Angry Birds Magic, a location-based platform which will be built into all Angry Birds games.
We’ve already seen a hint of Magic when Rovio showed off an Angry Birds game that unlocked new levels and characters with an NFC-enabled phone. It will also work with Angry Birds stuffed toys which will have NFC chips inside them. But Angry Birds Magic goes way beyond NFC phones (which are by no means mainstream). Magic is a platform that will also be based on location, so that you can unlock new experiences depending on where you are playing Angry Birds.
“Magic Places will work on any phone,” says Darabiha. “So you can think of Magic as a way to deliver new things via interactions in the physical world.”
And what about new games that don’t involve birds flinging themselves at objects? _Wine And Dine_ will be more about the pigs, but new games with completely different gameplay (but the same characters) are also in the works.
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Erick has been discovering and working with startups his entire professional career as a technology journalist, startup event producer, and founder. Erick is President & Founding Partner at Traction Technology Partners. He is also a co-founder of TouchCast, the leading interactive video platform, and a partner at bMuse, a startup studio in New York City. He is the former Executive Producer of the DEMO conferences and former Editor-in-Chief of TechCrunch (where he helped conceive, lead and select startups for the Disrupt conferences, among other duties). Prior to TechCrunch, which he joined as Co-Editor in 2007, Erick was Editor-at-Large for Business 2.0 magazine, and a senior writer at Fortune magazine covering technology.
At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving media property. After founder Michael Arrington left in 2011, Schonfeld became Editor in Chief.
Prior to TechCrunch, he was Editor-at-Large for Business 2.0 magazine, where he wrote feature stories and ran their main blog, The Next Net. He also launched the online video series “The Disruptors” with CNN/Money and hosted regular panels and conferences of industry luminaries. Schonfeld started his career at Fortune magazine in 1993, where he was recognized with numerous journalism awards.
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