Rovio reaches 1 billion Angry Birds downloads

Rovio Mobile, the company behind Angry Birds has an excellent reason to jump for joy. The company announced that they reached their one billionth Angry Birds download. Rovio reached their billionth download yesterday but didn't specify who the billionth downloader was, which particular Angry Birds game it was or which platform the billionth download was acquired on. The download count, however, includes all platforms and all the Angry Birds games that Rovio has made which are: Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Space, as well as the free, light versions of the games. According to Mashable, Rovio communications specialist Sini Matikainen stated in an email, "We are so thankful to all of our fans for their support, and we can’t wait for them to see what we have coming up." Rovio has even made a 21 second video to thank their fans for all their support.

Angry Birds launched in 2009, first for iOS users. When the game was in development, the folks at Rovio liked the idea of building wingless and legless birds. To choose an enemy for the birds, they thought pigs were appropriate as the swine flu epidemic was in motion at the time. Rovio partnered with company, Chillingo to publish the first Angry Birds app to the iOS App Store. After that, Rovio self published all their Angry Birds titles, with the exception of the PlayStation Portable version of the game, which was published under the production of Abstraction Games and distrubuted by Chillingo. When Rovio wanted to bring Angry Birds to Android devices, they had to deal with multiple hardware configurations and their initial minimum requirements for the game left at least 30 Android devices unable to support the game.

After the regular Angry Birds gained the enthusiasm that it did, Rovio launched a Halloween special under Angry Birds Seasons in October 2010, again first only for iOS. Android and Symbian versions of the game came in December of that year. In March 2011, Rovio tied up with 20th Century Fox to bring Angry Birds Rio. And finally, in March of this year, Angry Birds launched their Space edition with all new gameplay techniques. Free updates have been made available for all games with additional levels added. Which is your favourite Angry Birds game? Let us know in the comments section below.