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Stats Games Idle

Angry Birds Downloads Pass Half-Billion Mark 94

Posted by samzenpus from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-pigs? dept.
bdking writes "The most popular mobile game in history now has been downloaded more than 500,000,000 times, according to maker Rovio Mobile. Good thing the 300 million minutes of Angry Birds daily playing time around the world aren't being wasted or anything. Rovio chief executive Mikael Hed says: 'This is a fantastic landmark achievement for us, and we’re extremely delighted to see such an incredible amount of people enjoying our games. We remain committed to creating more fun experiences and bringing exceptional quality to Angry Birds Fans everywhere.'"
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Angry Birds Downloads Pass Half-Billion Mark More

Angry Birds Downloads Pass Half-Billion Mark

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  • How many commas are in a "Half-Billion"? I think there's more than one...maybe we should ask the pigs.
    • Kinda of interested to find out which part was the typo? The half billion or million?
      • Really? You think it might be a half million? Or did you just want to get a post near the top?
      • Pretty sure it's the latter. Later on in the article, it reads:

        Beyond the half-million downloads, Rovio trotted out some other amazing Angry Birds metrics

        • Nope, the numbers in the sentence right after the one you quoted just wouldn't make sense. 200,000 YEARS of playing time on 500,000 downloads? I think not. It's 500 million, or half a billion.

          Darn it. Wish I'd thought of birds launching into pig-forts first. :(

    • The article linked to also says "half billion" and "500,000". I assume it's 500,000,000.
      • bridgekeeper: What is the velocity of a sparrow in flight?
        Brian: African or American?
        bridgekeeper: I dunno? Aaaaaaaaaah, (flies into the abyss....)


        Isn't a billion a different amount (million is different I'm pretty sure) on the American side of the pond than on the European? 500,000,000 is a half billion in American terms.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Rovio is european, so metric billion which is a thousand millions, or thousand thousand thousands (1.000.000.000).

        Journalist who is probably american, assumed imperial billion which is thousand thousands (1.000.000).

        Not the first nor the last time these two get confused.

        • No - American Billion is 10^9 or as you put it 1.000.000.000

        • You are confused about both systems yourself. The systems, by the way are not "metric" and "imperial", but "long scale" and "short scale". [wikipedia.org] And, you got the details of both systems wrong!

          American English and modern British English: 10^6 = million, 10^9 = billion, 10^12 = trillion.
          non-English speaking Europe: 10^6 million, 10^9 = thousand million, 10^12 = billion.

          As you see, million is the same on both systems. Billion is different.

          Even though Rovio is Finnish, he appears to be using the English system in

  • 500,000,000 downloads... 300,000,000 minutes... 0.6 minutes played per download?
    These numbers must include trials and people re-downloading on new phones. I'd be more interested in the number who have PURCHASED Angry Birds.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by MattGWU ( 86623 )

      That assumes all downloads are played once a day.

      Also apparently Angry Birds phones home about your usage habits.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by baenpb ( 1343241 )
      500,000 downloads, but Rovio says it has shipped more than 10 million Angry Birds toys worldwide. I'm assuming it's 500,000,000. .6 minutes per download seems reasonable to me. As soon as you install on your ipod, iphone, and on every instance of chrome. And then you realize that the game sucks so you only play 5 minutes of it.

    • 500,000,000 downloads... 300,000,000 minutes... 0.6 minutes played per download? These numbers must include trials and people re-downloading on new phones. I'd be more interested in the number who have PURCHASED Angry Birds.

      Good thing the 300 million minutes of Angry Birds daily..

      My guess is that people play the game on days other than that on which it was downloaded.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zebadee ( 551743 )

      500,000,000 downloads... 300,000,000 minutes... 0.6 minutes played per download? These numbers must include trials and people re-downloading on new phones. I'd be more interested in the number who have PURCHASED Angry Birds.

      300,000,000 PER DAY.....not everyone who downloaded it will play it everyday!?

    • 500,000,000 downloads, 300,000,000 minutes PER DAY, 105,120,000,000 minutes total. Or, ~3.5 hours per download.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Per day. Not everyone plays daily, and these are downloads across all games. It doesn't mean there are half a billion users, just that all games and various add-ons have been downloaded this many times in total.

  • Which One? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Grizzley9 ( 1407005 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2011 @04:47PM (#37925318)
    Does this include all of the Angry Birds games or only the original? Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio (and possibly others)? I've got all 3 and they have been well worth the buck entry fee. Their continual addition of new levels makes it one of the best values out there for games.

    And can we seriously stop with the 50 posts and reposts about some typo in the summary?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Most likely yes. It's a standard inflationary marketing approach which counts any and all add-ons and such as a "separate download". Notice how they do not talk about customers.

      That said, the game is still huge.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KDR_11k ( 778916 )

        Also all software updates cause additional downloads. So if you sell 10 million units and push five software updates with everybody downloading them you got 60 million downloads just from that.

    • You bring up a good point because I wonder if updates count... correct me if I am wrong but updates require virtually (or exactly) the same size download as the original correct? Updates + variations = skewed statistics perhaps?

      cheers

  • Chicky . . . SMASH!
  • I don't think the 300 million minutes are wasted by any means. I babysit for my brother and while I love both of his children, there does come a point in the night where I can no longer be a human jungle-gym, or the big bad monster, or the wrestling star (they're very active kids) and I need to sit for a few minutes. The only way to get those kids (ages 3 and 5) to sit still is to give them my phone with angry birds. They are suddenly quiet and, of all things, polite! They know that if they fight over t
    • I don't think the 300 million minutes are wasted by any means.

      I think the AB haters are really funny. Most of the people I have meet that think its a stupid game are 'hard-core' gamers that are too cool for that sort of silliness. The amusing thing is AB is just a graphically updated version of the old games we used to play on c64 and apple ][e, where you selected an angle and velocity for your cannon, and fired a projectile at a target over polynomial generated mountains.

      Just because its is launching

      • The amusing thing is AB is just a graphically updated version of the old games we used to play on c64 and apple ][e, where you selected an angle and velocity for your cannon, and fired a projectile at a target over polynomial generated mountains.

        Yeah, I remember those games. They sucked too. Amusing for about 6 minutes, then I would move on to something more engaging.

      • The amusing thing is AB is just a graphically updated version of the old games we used to play on c64 and apple ][e, where you selected an angle and velocity for your cannon, and fired a projectile at a target over polynomial generated mountains.

        Depending upon how old you are, you're either talking about Artillery, Scorched Earth, or Worms.
        Apple II makes it sound like the original Artillery. :) Great game. Scorched Earth was the one I got really into, and then worms is just silly and awesome.

        That said, AB is actually simpler than Artillery even, you don't get to move and your positions aren't as random, there's no terrain making things interesting, and there's certainly none of the worms variety. Its almost more of a modern flash physics catapult

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by avm ( 660 )

      I concur.... my 3 and 5 year olds love it. I've got an older Android phone with no service that I keep around for just this reason.

  • Sure, it's easy to be a hater. But you got to give those guys props that they created something fun enough that both me and my four year old daughter find fun at the same time. Easy to play, a little tougher to master, and you can pick it up for minutes or hours at a time.

    Whether you like it or not, Angry Birds is at least or more socially relevant than anything else that's come out in consumer market - app or web-based - in the past year or so. Good to see that crossover hits like this can be done.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Except they didn't create anything, just re-skinned a free Flash game.

  • I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

  • Good thing the 300 million minutes of Angry Birds daily playing time around the world aren't being wasted or anything.

    Ah, of course. The summary wouldn't be complete without a snide dig at the mainstream. Cause geeks would never waste time playing a game after all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by isorox ( 205688 )

      Good thing the 300 million minutes of Angry Birds daily playing time around the world aren't being wasted or anything.

      Ah, of course. The summary wouldn't be complete without a snide dig at the mainstream. Cause geeks would never waste time playing a game after all.

      I, and a lot of people I see, tend to play Angry birds when I get a minute or two of unproductive time. Standing in a squashed train, waiting for an elevator, etc.

      Not enough time to read a book, not enough space to break out a laptop to do some work.

      People that are into their computer games will happily spend entire weekends playing the latest game (Battlefield 3?). Years ago I spent weeks playing Civ 1/2/3, and I know people that poured their heat and sole into games like Championship Manager.

      Games that yo

  • Rogue (Score:2)

    by sconeu ( 64226 )

    I seem to recall reading in the early '80s that Rogue was responsible for over $1Billion in wasted computer time.

    I wonder how much Angry Birds would be if they still charged for CPU usage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Unfortunately CPU usage is too cheap to really care. Electricity used to play AB on the other hand would indeed be an interesting measurement.

  • How many times it was re downloaded due to new phones and after factory restores of different phones. For one I would not waste phone/sd card space when I can easily download it again. I know I have downloaded it a good 5-10 times over the few years it has been out due to the above reasons.

  • I've always wondered since I got my first iPod Touch if multiple downloads of the same item were counted in these statistics.

    For example, I have personally downloaded Angry Birds ten times but only purchased it once. What happens is that iTunes on my computer downloads the "Update" and my iPod Touch also downloads the same "Update" independently.

    Does that count as two downloads or one?

  • I refuse to waste my time on Angry Birds. I'm waiting for someone to port Lemmings to iOS.

  • I am continually surprised... (Score:3)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2011 @07:10PM (#37927340) Journal
    That Angry Birds has managed to achieve such popularity, even among mainstream non/casual gamers, without any of the media's paranoic talking heads getting worked up about it.

    Let's be clear here, cutesy graphics and sounds aside, the game is about a bunch of birds, enraged at their dispossession by the pigs, launching martyrdom operations against the pigs and their infrastructure. You lose unless the pigs are exterminated and you get extra points for each infrastructure element destroyed. Surely that should have been enough for a hysterical article on the WorldNetDaily, or an ongoing conspiracy subthread over at freerepublic concerning the question of whether Angry Birds is objectively pro terror?
  • There are 16 million users in the high score chart visible on iPhone. Are those including Android and other platforms? And of course there are those that never had Internet connectivity. Still, 500 millions sounds very far fetched.

  • Just passing the levels is easy, mostly. But getting three stars on a level usually requires strategic thinking. That, combined with the fact that you don't have to commit to play for more than about 30 seconds at a time seem make Angry Birds a winner with lasting entertainment potential.

    I'm writing this because I was actually quite surprised at how well the game works. I dismissed it as a fad for quite some time. But ultimately it was much more fun than I thought it would be.

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