Angry Birds Downloads Pass Half-Billion Mark 94
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.'"
Journalists and Math (Score:1)
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Maybe a billiard?
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Well, there is a stark difference between imperial and metric billion, in that one is 1000 times less then other. So confusion happens quite often.
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Beyond the half-million downloads, Rovio trotted out some other amazing Angry Birds metrics
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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. :(
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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.
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The Brits generally use the short scale billion now.
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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.
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Math is hard when you haven't slept for two days. I stand redfaced and corrected.
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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
Re:half-million? (Score:5, Funny)
We're using Congressional accounting, just round everything up to the nearest billion.
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I thought it was as mediocre then as it is now. Am I the only one who just doesn't get the popularity of this game? It reminds me of the late 90's/early 2000's Snood craze, where for no apparent reason the entire world became completely obsessed with a random, mediocre puzzle game.
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The first few levels were somewhat entertaining when I was riding the metro in DC, but after 30 or so stages, it quickly became tedious. I, too, do not understand the popularity.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
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If you're getting these free games to occupy an hour or so of your free time and complaining about repetitiven
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This gives me ideas. A game where you shoot poop into toilets. While sitting on a toilet pooping.
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That idea is just stupid enough to be a massive hit.
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Chiming in on the don't get it sentiment. It becomes very repetitive, very fast, which to me equates to boredom. Perhaps the popularity is related to simple minds being amused by simple things?
The whole point about games like Angry Birds is that you can pick them up and play for ten minutes or half an hour. Most people don't get bored that quickly. You aren't going to sit down and play for ten hours at a time like you no doubt do with World of Warcraft.
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You are part of that metric then. It doesn't mean that half a billion people like the game, only that there were half a billion downloads. Likely a lot of those were bored people who played a little and then stopped.
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Having never played World of Goo, I don't know much about it. I tried to find it on the Android Market, but it isn't there, is it a game that would lend itself well to a phone? I wonder how many sales the dev would have if he ported it over.
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Because it is the cool crowd who plays it.
Because it is like that popular tv show (enter name) that everyone seems to like, so you have to seem to like it to blend in
Because you just finished Demon's Souls and you need to play something "light"
Because he [thefrisky.com] plays it (if you are a girl)
This should cover 500mil people.
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I thought it was as mediocre then as it is now. Am I the only one who just doesn't get the popularity of this game?
Actually, I've still never seen it (living in Finland with several Android smartphones in the house, and a variety of smartphones at work). I'm willing to believe it's mediocre or a lot worse than mediocre.
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Nope. I tried it, and imho most of the iterations of Worms are much better for games of that genre.
But that's just me, I played Worms since the original, and I played many of their predecessors. Other then graphics, the whole "physics based catapulting game" is nothing new to me.
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I thought it was as mediocre then as it is now. Am I the only one who just doesn't get the popularity of this game?
I agree completely. I download a lot of IOS games, and this one is probably not quite as good as the average weekly release from Donut Games [donutgames.com]. I think the marketing for Angry Birds has been better, so I guess I'm not completely puzzled by the success, but I'm still a bit shocked by it.
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I think you mean Castle Clout.
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Good to know the submitter doesn't know how to count to a billion.
The submitter is just quoting TFA.
What the...? (Score:1)
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.
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That assumes all downloads are played once a day.
Also apparently Angry Birds phones home about your usage habits.
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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.
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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!?
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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)
And can we seriously stop with the 50 posts and reposts about some typo in the summary?
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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.
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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.
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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
Productivity (Score:2)
300 million minutes wasted? (Score:2)
Awesome physics engine (Score:2)
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
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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.
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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. :) Great game. Scorched Earth was the one I got really into, and then worms is just silly and awesome.
Apple II makes it sound like the original Artillery.
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
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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.
It's become a cultural phenomenon (Score:1)
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.
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Except they didn't create anything, just re-skinned a free Flash game.
Obligatory Farnsworth (Score:3)
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
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I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Then go move to Washington, DC.
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Jealousy much? (Score:2)
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.
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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)
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.
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Unfortunately CPU usage is too cheap to really care. Electricity used to play AB on the other hand would indeed be an interesting measurement.
I don't think it's accurate (Score:1)
Downloaded versus Purchased? (Score:2)
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?
Lemmings (Score:2)
I am continually surprised... (Score:3)
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?
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I like to think that this would more belong in the Onion, but the sad thing is that you're probably right.
Pomplamoose Cover of Angry Birds theme. (Score:2)
Some real numbers (Score:1)
Interestingly, Angry Birds is a Strategy Game (Score:2)
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.