Back again with a Rovio update! As of this morning, SEGA has officially acquired Angry Birds developer Rovio for $776 million. The deal will be for the all of Rovio’s outstanding shares and options, valuing them at 9.25 euro per share, a 19% premium to their closing price before the announcement.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed a day later by Rovio themselves, SEGA’s parent company Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. is in talks to acquire the Finnish mobile game company Rovio for a staggering 1 billion dollars. Rovio gained worldwide fame with its smash hit franchise Angry Birds which took mobile gaming by storm at the dawn of the App Store and has since expanded into a multimedia franchise.
The acquisition could mark a strategic move for SEGA, as the company could tap into Rovio’s expertise in developing addictive and globally popular mobile games. The acquisition also grants SEGA access to Rovio’s vast user base and provides an opportunity to cross over SEGA owned franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog. Interestingly, Sonic and Angry Birds crossed paths in a Sonic Dash event in 2015.
We will likely learn more about the deal this week, and in the meantime we can only imagine what a Sonic Angry Birds game will play like…
Sammy aka parent company of SEGA, has launched a teaser site for their upcoming gambling pachislot machines based on the ever popular Bayonetta IP. It seems that pachislot machines get a negative reaction but most people don’t understand that most of these products have nothing to do with SEGA Games division. This is nothing new, considering that Sammy has been using SEGA (and other) IPs to sell Pachislots for over a decade. It has been a very profitable business for ‘SEGA-Sammy Holdings‘.
Before everyone complains in the comment section about how “SEGA should have just funded Bayonetta 2 instead of this”, please understand that this is like saying “Sony should fund a new Tomba! video game on Playstation 4 instead of making The Interview”, both projects are competently different and the cost of doing a Bayonetta themed pachislot machine is way lower than creating a HD game from scratch.
I hope this means that SEGA and Sammy both find value in owning the Bayonetta IP and haven’t abandoned it. Would be nice to see SEGA do a extended version of Bayonetta 2 on other platforms outside of the dying Wii U.
Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity (PSP2i) isn’t afraid to have a ton of tie-ins, there has been a great deal announced. Now that Sakura Wars has a new game, it seems like a good time to announce the PSP2i tie-in. SEGA did not provide screens or much information on what will be released, but we do know it will be ‘pay’ DLC. So if you like Sakura Wars, get your credit card ready.
Other tie-in announced was Kaito Tenshi Twin Angel 2, which happens to be a popular SAMMY Kaito Tenshi Twin Angel 2, a popular Sammy pachinko machine.
[Source: AndriaSang]