Angry Birds

Take it for what it's worth but Rovio has announced a new Angry Birds game for our Windows Phone. Angry Birds Star Wars combines the gaming action of Angry Birds with the settings of the Star Wars movies.

According to Peter Vesterbacka, CMO of Rovio,

"This is the best Angry Birds game we’ve ever done. It’s the best parts of Angry Birds with all new cutting-edge gameplay set in in a galaxy far, far away. As a big Star Wars fan myself, I’m really excited about this new universe. The Force is definitely strong with this one."

Angry Birds Star Wars is expected to become available worldwide on November 8th and was developed for iOS, Android, Amazon Kindle Fire, OSX, Windows 8 and Windows Phone.  The wording of the presser leaves us uncommitted to a Windows Phone date. While November 8th is revealed as the launch of the game, the official wording does not connect that date to all platforms, which we would find difficult to believe as launching simultaneously. 

It’s always interesting to see a popular mobile phone game jump to consoles. Xbox 360 has already received Fruit Ninja Kinect (which turned out pretty well other than the crummy menus), and Doodle Jump is coming with Kinect controls too. That only leaves one other major casual franchise to make the jump: Angry Birds! Well, just as Angry Birds Space is coming to Windows Phone eventually, so too are several Angry Birds games coming to Xbox 360 in the form of Angry Birds Trilogy.

Rovio’s popular bird-flinging series will be published on consoles by Activision (best known for their Call of Duty franchise). Angry Birds Trilogy contains the first three series entries: Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio, and Angry Birds Seasons. For those keeping score, only the first game made it to Windows Phone, where it has languished with only a single title update and no Mango support. A patch for 256 MB devices is supposedly coming, at least. But hey, at least it only costs 99 cents nowadays!

With the Xbox 360 being the number one console as opposed to the current third-place position of Microsoft’s mobile OS, we can certainly expect Trilogy to receive much better support as far as content updates go. However, free updates are extremely scarce on the 360 (Minecraft: XBLA Edition had to get special permission for regular updates), with PDLC much more the norm. Rovio and Activision haven’t commented on exactly episodes (sets of levels) are included in Trilogy or their DLC plans, so these things remain to be seen.

Head past the break for more detals, screenshots, and pricing info!

A few days ago some sites made some hay over the fact that the Nokia Lumia 610 (and any other 256MB devices) can't run certain apps or games. Some of the big titles thrown out include Tango Video Calls, Skype and and Angry Birds which at first blush appears to be bad news. Insert fragmentation commentary, yadda yadda.

While certainly true, the situation is far from permanent or dire. In short, neither app has been updated for 256MB devices as requested by Microsoft. There's no real reason why Angry Birds can't be optimized for 256MB devices, nor presumably Tango Video Calls. Heck, Angry Birds has barely been updated at all on Windows Phone.

That's about to change though as Rovio is working on a 256MB optimized version for the Luma 610 and any other low-end Windows Phones. Heidi Lemmetyinen, Editor-in-Chief, Nokia Conversations, responded in comments on Nokia's Blog with the following (translated):

"The Rovio team is currently being Angry Birds Lumia 610 for the optimized version. Yet it is not therefore available to the public but we've known about this.  We will notify you, of course as soon as possible."

So bump in the road? Yes. Permanent fiasco? Hardly. We expect Angry Birds and the remaining 5% of apps and games to be updated over the coming weeks as the Lumia 610 and other 256MB start to come online. Let's not forget: Nokia and Rovio have forged a partnership to fast-track Angry Birds Space and their other titles to Windows Phone, so making their previous title compatible with the 610 shouldn't be a surprise.

Sorry folks, nothing to see here. Time to move along.

Be sure to check our demo of Skype on the Lumia 610 and our unboxing video for more info.

Source: Nokia; via Nokia HD Blog; Thanks, simone, for the tip

Remember that huge Easter sale on Xbox Live titles we were so enthusiastic about a short time ago? It took a little while to receive confirmation on this, but we’ve learned that the seven featured games have permanently dropped in price to 99 cents. That’s good news to Windows Phone gamers as it means we have a new (and more competitive) price point for games!

The seven games that dropped in price from $2.99 to 99 cents:

• Angry Birds - Review
• Burn the Rope - Review
• De Blob - Review
• Doodle God – Review
• IonBallEX - Review
• Max and the Magic Marker - Review
• Toy Soldiers: Boot Camp - Review

Wondering what prompted the change in prices? The obvious answer is that Microsoft timed the drops in accordance with the release of the Nokia Lumia 900 (review). With the much-vaunted handset producing a flood of new Windows Phone owners and potential gamers, the big MS probably thought it important for these new customers to be able to pick up a few Xbox Live games on the cheap. Angry Birds in particular really needed to come down in price due to it being offered for free on a few other platforms already. In case the hubbub over Rovio passing on bringing Angry Birds in Space to Windows Phone (and their subsequent one-eighty) didn’t cue you in, it’s very important that the masses have their Angry Birds.

In Angry Birds’ case, platform equity is most likely reason for a price drop. And certainly most of the seven games cost 99 cents on iPhone as well – but not all. De Blob Revolution actually sells for $2.99 on iTunes at present. Something tells me it simply wasn’t a hot seller on Windows Phone, perhaps due to the weakness of the De Blob brand or the game’s lack of post-release updates. As for Toy Soldiers: Boot Camp, why that’s a Windows Phone exclusive! But the game is a bit content-light, a factor that may have led to its price shedding a few dollars.

Wondering whether the game makers had any say in their titles’ new prices? “We had the opportunity to drop our existing games to the new price point, so we decided to do so and test the water, so to speak,” one Xbox Live developer told WPCentral. The same game maker expects to drop the price of another title in the future.

The new price offers advantages to everyone involved. Developers now have a little more control in the pricing of their games, and gamers can pick up titles more affordably. Of course, for a game to be more profitable in the 99 cent range than $2.99, it needs to sell over three times as many copies. Initially, the Windows Phone user base simply wasn’t large enough to sustain such low prices. Microsoft could have still launched with the sub-dollar price, but games would have been loss leaders until more people picked up handsets. Now that Nokia is fully onboard and actively advertising the Lumia 900, the user base has either grown enough or is expected to grow enough in short order to make lower game prices viable.

How many of these seven games have you picked up since they got cheaper, dear readers?

As to squelch the disappointment (mostly of the tech media who care about such things), Rovio, makers of the popular Angry Birds series announced that they had no plans for the latest installment, Angry Birds Space, for Windows Phone. Later that day, the CEO of Rovio backtracked and said no, they were working on it.

Now even Nokia is getting in on the news by confirming that yes, the latest craze for outer orbit bird craziness is coming to Windows Phone. On their Facebook page this morning, Nokia simply note: "Finnish gaming company Rovio is working on getting its new Angry Birds Space game to Windows Phone platform too". 

So you can rejoice or shrug in indifference at this point, we'll wait.

Our feeling on this is that Rovio probably did not have plans to bring this to our beloved OS, but due to the public pressure (read: tech media flipping out), the company quickly changed gears once Microsoft probably stepped in (and maybe even Nokia). The fact that there's no release date in site tells us that this has probably barely begun to be developed, so while we can look forward to the title, we're not expecting it anytime soon.

Source: Nokia Facebook; via Plaffo

Sad news from the outskirts of space: Windows Phone won't be getting Angry Birds Space on March 22 when Android and iOS do.  An email from Rovio, developer of the mega-popular phenomenon, told DailyMobile that while they are "working day and night to get the game to all relevant devices," they do not have the resources to get deliver to all platforms at once.  Having been wait-listed for the first installment of Angry Birds, only to be missing 105 levels when it finally did arrive,  this comes as another heavy blow from Rovio.  Being that Android and iOS dominate mobile market, it makes sense that Windows Phone takes a back seat, but it doesn't sting any less.

Rovio declined to share any information about specific features of the newest add-on to the Angry Birds franchise.  However, the game was previewed at SXSW on Samsung's Galaxy Note, which benefits from Samsung's partnership with Rovio by getting exclusive in-game content.  For now, you can get a small taste from the teaser below.

Just the other day we pointed out (or were moaning about) how Angry Birds was missing about 105 levels from the v1.0 release. That's due to our port being based on an older release (v1.4.2) whereas the iPhone and Android are on v1.6.1. Basically Rovio is known to frequently update the app on the other platforms, adding new levels and making the financial investment (if there was one) quite lasting--in fact it's one of the reasons people keep playing the darn game.

Good new for us is that v1.1 of Angry Birds is now live and now features 225 levels, up from the previous 135. What that translates to is the addition of Episodes 10 and 11, which were previously locked with a "coming soon" on them. This translates to the "Ham 'em High" or section 5 in the game. In addition, as can be seen by the lead pic, the design of the game has changed a bit too, but nothing that should get anyone upset.

Hey, for $2.99 and after being out for a few weeks, kudos to Rovio/MSG for pushing this update just as many of us were finishing those 135 previous levels. Hopefully we'll continue to see this trend with this game as it progresses.

If you're one of those who haven't bought it yet, you can try it out here in the Marketplace. See our review here. Thanks, Damien H., for the heads up!

Windows Phone gamers have been anxiously awaiting the start of the 6 Weeks of Must Have Games promotion. It was initially thought to begin in April, but then we learned it had been pushed back to an unspecified date. Shortly thereafter at MIX 2011, Joe Belfiore announced that Angry Birds would come out on May 25, so everyone assumed that the Must-haves would roll out then.

As it turns out, May 25 does indeed mark the start of the 6 Weeks of Must Have Games. But Angry Birds won’t be next week’s Xbox Live release after all. Instead, that honor goes to Hydro Thunder Go, the only Windows Phone-exclusive title in the Must-Have lineup. Leading with the strongest title is a smart idea, as Hydro Thunder Go has some great buzz surrounding it. Hydro Thunder Go will launch on May 25 at the very fair price of $4.99.

But that’s not all! We’ve got the full Xbox Live release schedule for the next 6 weeks, including prices and screenshots. Head past the jump for the exciting details.