On Monday morning, Finnish Rovio said that they would accept an acquisition of Sega for NOK 8 billion. Sega expects the recording to take place by September.
Rovio is best known for having been behind the hugely popular Angry Birds games on mobile platforms, and it seems to be precisely this area that Sega is now focusing more on.
The plan seems to be to use Rovio to develop mobile games based on Sega’s other games.
This gang will now be in the same game series number as Sonic.
Rovio
– In the ever-growing global game market, mobile games have particularly high potential, and it has been a long-term goal for Sega to accelerate our focus on this field, says Sega CEO Haruki Satomi in a press release.
Sega points to an expectation that the mobile market will account for 56 percent of the games market by 2026. The company wants to capitalize on that, and envisions using Rovio’s expertise to accelerate the development of mobile games based on Sega’s brands.
After Sega put console production on the shelf in the wake of the Dreamcast in 2001, the company has focused on developing games for most platforms. They have also acquired several game studios along the way, including the Persona studio Atlus in 2013, and the Total War developers in Creative Assembly in 2005.
Controversial name change
The last time we heard from Rovio it was in a more controversial context. In February, the company suffered backlash when it removed the original Angry Birds game from Google Play, renaming it on iOS: Red’s First Flight.
The notable change was apparently made because the game ate into the revenue potential of their other games, as Angry Birds did not feature microtransactions or advertising. Rovio has since said that there is a possibility that they will release the game on Google Play again under the new iOS name.
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