Mobile games publisher Rovio has confirmed that its Angry Birds Star Wars II game will be available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone when it launches on 19 September, and that it will be a paid game costing $0.99 (£0.69).
That follows the pattern laid down by the first Angry Birds Star Wars game, which was released across the three platforms in November 2012, and has since been downloaded more than 100m times.
Rovio will release an additional free version of the sequel for Android, supported by advertising. The publisher announced the news on its blog, along with a trailer for the game voiced by Ian McDiarmid, who played Emperor Palpatine in the original Star Wars films.
Angry Birds Star Wars II will include more than 30 characters from the Star Wars universe, and as previously announced, will be accompanied by a line of "Telepods" toys produced by Hasbro, which players will be able to scan to import characters into the game.
The toys will cost between £5.99 and £39.99 in the UK, representing the latest non-mobile revenue stream for Angry Birds. 45% of Rovio's revenues in 2012 came from sales of plush toys and other branded merchandise.
Angry Birds Star Wars II will also have its own range of toys, clothing, accessories, books and plush toys. National Geographic is publishing the official book of the game on 17 September.
The model for Angry Birds Star Wars II's Telepods toys is Activision's Skylanders franchise, which generated more than $1bn of sales for its publisher in the first 15 months after its debut in 2011.
Disney has just launched its Disney Infinity game and toy range to follow suit, while Cartoon Network and Lego are collaborating on a similar physical-meets-digital brand called Mixels, which is due to debut in 2014.
Rovio will be hoping to surpass the 100m downloads of the first Angry Birds Star Wars game with its sequel, and prove its main franchise is still flying high in 2013.
The publisher ended 2012 with 263m monthly active players of Angry Birds games, but has been overtaken in terms of revenues by free-to-play games like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment