Angry Birds games downloaded 1.7 billion times, weekly cartoons coming within the apps

What started out as a single game for smartphones has become a worldwide franchise and the latest move by Rovio, the makers of the Angry Birds series, is almost guaranteed to ensure that its global success continues. On the weekend of March 16-17, Rovio will launch a series of 52 cartoons chronicling the adventures of the Angry Birds and the Bad Piggies. The weekly cartoons will be broadcast on traditional TV channels (like FOX8 in Australia, Canal J in France and SUPER RTL in Germany), via video-on-demand (including all of Comcast’s video platforms in the US) and through a dedicated channel available inside Rovio games.
If the cartoons aren’t being carried by a TV station near you, don’t worry. All you need to do is download the latest update to any of the Angry Birds games and then wait until March 17th when a new cartoon channel button will be unlocked within the game.
Rovio has plans to become an entertainment power house, and since its games have been downloaded over 1.7 billion times, Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio, reckons that the company can reach a far wider and more targeted global audience via the in-app cartoon channel than through traditional distribution methods.

The history of how Angry Birds went from being a casual puzzle game to worldwide franchise is phenomenal  At first the company set itself a target of 100 million downloads, which at the time was a noble goal indeed, but that figure was dwarfed when the series passed the 1 billion mark in May 2012. Earlier this month the original Angry Birds game became free on the iOS platform (it has mostly always been free on Android, but supported by ads) in a move which was clearly designed to increase the number of mobile devices with the app installed, ready for the release of the cartoons.