Rovio may make games about livid fowls, but the studio is cashing large enough checks that it should start developing titles about happy bank accounts any day now.

Rovio Entertainment, which produces Angry Birds and several other mobile games, announced its financial results for 2012 today. The studio reported revenues of nearly $195 million on the strength of its games and consumer products. That’s up 101 percent from $97 million in 2011. Earnings before interest and taxes are up 50 percent from $60.2 million in 2011 to $98.5 million in 2012.

“Year 2012 was another record-breaking year for Rovio,” the developer’s chief financial officer Herkko Soininen said in a statement. “We doubled our revenue with an EBIT margin of 50%, more than doubled our headcount, established new offices, and a new business ventures unit. Also, to protect our own, as well as our partners’ and our fans’ interests, we continue to invest heavily in brand protection globally.”

Throughout its fiscal year, Rovio launched four major mobile games that all topped the mobile-app charts. Angry Birds Space, Amazing Alex, Bad Piggies, and Angry Birds Star Wars produced 1 billion total downloads by May. Sales of these, along with in-app advertising, were two of Rovio’s biggest revenue streams.

The other major area of growth is Rovio’s consumer products line of toys, branded peripherals, and smartphone cases. That sector tripled for the developer and generated nearly 45 percent of its total revenue.

“Rovio has grown from a phenomenon to a very successful global business,” Rovio chief executive officer Mikael Hed said. “In 2010 we set out to build an entertainment company and after last years performance we are on a strong path to achieve our goal.”

Going forward, Rovio has new titles, consumer products, and entertainment releases in the works. The company just announced that it is bringing its social Facebook game Angry Birds Friends to mobile devices in the near future. It is also working on an Angry Birds cartoon.

“We have had a stellar start for this year,” said Hed. “In addition to our successful games portfolio, we recently launched our first Angry Birds Toons series through third-party partners and our own in-game distribution channel. We will continue to strengthen our position in the entertainment business through continuing to innovate on our existing brands, exploring creating new IP as well as exploring opportunities with external parties.”

In addition to the cartoon series, Rovio is also working on an Angry Birds movie that is due in theaters in 2016.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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On Christmas Day, people activated approximately 17.4 million new iOS, Android, and other mobile devices.

That day, gamers downloaded over 8 million copies of Angry Birds games.

“Angry Birds Star Wars and Bad Piggies in particular have dominated the app charts, with Angry Birds Star Wars holding the No. 1 position on the U.S. iPhone chart ever since its release,” read a statement on the Rovio blog. “To top it all off, we had 30 million download during Christmas week.”

That’s a lot of people sling-shotting a ton of grumpy fowls.

We’ve covered the importance of the gift-giving holidays for developers previously, and Rovio is one of the biggest examples of just how big Dec. 25 is for mobile-game developers. As Rovio’s infographic points out, the 8 million downloads for 17.4 million new devices is just about one Angry Bird download for every two phones or tablets.

While finding new games and apps is still a problem on the iOS App Store, the established publishers are having no trouble building on their past success.

Via Polygon

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Video game trailers are a big deal. Where once big budgets were the exception, they are increasingly becoming the norm. Deep pockets are not always key to creating a stand-out trailer, though. Ingenuity, innovation, and a healthy sense of humor can also go a long way to help sell a game.

Here we present the best game trailers to grace our screens during 2012. They represent a cross-section of the gaming world and feature a variety of styles and budgets. The one thing they have in common? They’re done right.

If you think we’ve missed any trailers of note, feel free to drop a comment below.

Borderlands 2

Gearbox Software gave its first-person role-playing shooter Borderlands 2 (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) a sing-a-long soundtrack that just shouldn’t have worked. The genius is that “Wimoweh” has never sounded as gloriously out of place since its original 1939 release. Even better than Tight Fit.

Watch Dogs

Eschewing both gameplay and prerendered footage, this trailer for Ubisoft’s open-world action-shooter Watch Dogs (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) brilliantly sets up the game’s premise with a starkly delivered blurring of fact and fiction that sounds eminently believable. Watch Dogs is certainly a title to look out for next year.

ZombieU

Zombies. Are we sick of them yet? Ubisoft doesn’t think so, having created one of the year’s most atmospheric trailers for its Wii U-exclusive survival-horror game. The film succeeds in making ordinary environments look extraordinary by subtly twisting our perspective on the dark streets of London.

Dyad

Independent developer Shawn McGrath unleashed his psychadelic musical shooter, Dyad, on the PlayStation 3 this summer. Its original trailer received an unkindly greeting in some quarters, with PlayStation Blog user Mattsta009 saying of its star: “It doesn’t look like that girl is even playing Dyad, she is kind of just holding a controller, acting badly and smiling vacuously at the screen.” In a stroke of genius, McGrath recast himself in the lead role. Watch from 20 seconds in to see him in action. The original trailer is underneath for a neat “compare and contrast” opportunity.

The Last of Us

Proof of the power of soundtrack, developer Naughty Dog used the Hank Williams song “Alone and Forsaken” to great effect in this trailer for upcoming PlayStation 3 action game The Last of Us. The atmosphere seems even more bleak and unforgiving with Williams’ raspy vocals layering on the tension.

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The Walking Dead
Released: July
Platforms: iOS
Developer: Telltale Games

Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead is groundbreaking in more than one way. An episodic adventure game in the classic style, today? Turns out, it’s a winner due to brilliant storytelling, solid controls, and, well, zombies. It’s based on the award-winning The Walking Dead comic book and television series, and by making this into a video game, it allowed for the introduction a new lead and set of supporting characters — a brilliant move. This enabled its authors to explore the same themes and ideas as the TV show and the comic book, but with a different emotional tone. Lee Everett and his young charge, Clementine, fill the emotional heart of the story in a way that Rick and his wife never quite do.

Curiosity
Released: November
Platforms: iOS
Developer: 22cans

The first release from Peter Molyneaux and 22cans is an experiment in massively multiplayer gaming with a simple yet compelling premise: “What’s in the center of the cube?” Like a huge virtual Tootsie Pop, the curiosity cube has layers upon layers of colored squares. You simply tap squares to remove them from the top layer of the world-sized cube — you and half a million players others using their iOS devices. Curiosity distills the very essence of its namesake, with teasing lines of prose scrolling across layers, various pictures buried in the skin of each cube layer, and some random coin earning mechanics. All of this seems to add up to one very innovative tapping experience that’s of a less game and more of a participatory experience.

Draw Something
Released: February
Platforms: iOS, Android
Developer: OMGPOP, Inc.
Draw Something was Zynga’s big gamble. Developed by indie team OMGPOP, Draw Something went viral and became as well known as Words With Friends or even Angry Birds. Why did this game become so popular? On the face of it, it’s a simple concept: This is nothing more than multiplayer Pictionary. Get a word and draw a picture that a friend attempts to guess. If they choose the correct word, you both get more points. Playing Draw Something is a lot more compelling, however. Artistic individuals challenge themselves to illustrate more and more abstract words with more and more elaborate, even painterly, images. Unfortunately, the Draw Something bubble burst soon after Zynga spent an obscene amount of money to acquire it. Still, the game continues to have a loyal following, with folks spending real money to buy new colors, word lists, and the like.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition
Released: December
Platforms: iOS
Developer: Overhaul Games
One of the pillars of RPG gaming from BioWare recently showed up on iOS, and it still made a huge splash with retro enthusiasts and hardcore RPG fans alike. While the enhancements include new playable characters with new backstories and touch-appropriate controls, this is essentially the same game as came out for PC 14 years ago. The game uses Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, making it as hardcore and difficult as the original PC game. While RPG games continue to streamline and simplify to interest new players, this 1998 gem remains as true to the form as ever, which is a powerful draw.

The World Ends With You
Released: August
Developer: Square Enix
The World Ends With You made me sit up and take notice when it first released in North America in 2008. The J-Pop flavor of the score; the quirky angst of protagonist Neku and his spunky, optimistic partners, Shiki, Joshua, and Beat; the fun mechanics of searching for and then fighting demons; the overarching storyline of The Game and its Reapers — this is not a typical handheld game. When it came to iOS this year, the loss of the dual-screen combat mechanic proved to have less of an impact than I feared. It’s still a ton of fun to play, with an irreverent wit and unique gameplay mechanics I’ve not seen anywhere else.

Bastion
Released: August
Platforms: iOS
Developer: Supergiant Games
Supergiant Games had a monster hit on its hands with Bastion, one of the best downloadable console games of the last several years. That it’s now available on an iPad or iPhone for five bucks is a revelation. Players follow The Kid through a dying world that somehow re-assembles itself ahead of the main character. The soundtrack is an oddly joyous combination of future-Western loops, guitar work, and haunting vocals — be sure to get the soundtrack if nothing else. The narration makes it all come together, as it tells its simple but compelling story about saving the world, one hammered monster at a time. It works exceedingly well on the touchscreen, too.

Plague Inc.
Released: May
Platforms: iOS, Android
Developer: Ndemic Creations
You’d think that a game featuring the travel paths of a viral plague would be dead boring, but Ndemic Creations proves that a game that’s essentially a spreadsheet simulation of a deadly viral plague across the globe is compelling entertainment. It has no fancy 3D graphics, cutscenes, or voice work, just a map of the world, several choices about how to best spread the disease most effectively (rats? air travel? mosquitos?), and a well-built simulation of how the world responds to your pandemic infection. It’s a chilling and realistic look at how disease can and does spread from place to place.

Angry Birds Star Wars
Released: November
Platforms: iOS, Android
Developer: Rovio Entertainment
Rovio somehow put two of the strongest intellectual properties together into one incredibly lust-worthy combination. Star Wars plus Angry Birds seems like an odd match, but it hit number one in the iTunes app charts within the first two and a half hours of release. It likely sold a huge number of copies via the Google Play store as well: Who can resist Angry Birds with lightsabers and officially sanctioned Star Wars sound effects? No one, that’s who.

Letterpress
Released: October
Platforms: iOS
Developer: atebits
Letterpress is like Boggle with friends with a particularly nasty twist: When you tap out words using the letters provided in the grid, they turn blue, taking points and potential victory from your opponent, chosen at random or from your Game Center friends list. The longer the word, the more points you get, and the less your opponent can rack up. It’s Othello or Go with letters and words, all built with care and a clean, modern design aesthetic.

Fieldrunners 2
Released: July
Platforms: iOS
Developer: Subatomic Studios
Tower defense games are all over the various mobile platforms, perhaps more than any other type of game. The opportunity for deep strategy exists with the tower defense genre, as does quick, pick-up-and-play instant gratification. Fieldrunners 2 is the apogee of tower defense games, as it boasts a variety of sub-genres, like open fields, fixed path, and survival wave modes. It has plenty of towers for you to buy and upgrade, more enemy types, and three levels of difficulty to try your patience and skill.

Infinity Blade II
Released: November 2011
Platforms: iOS
Developer: Chair Entertainment Group
Infinity Blade II came out in November of 2011, so it just missed our top iOS games post last year. Let’s rectify that now. This is a showcase title on any mobile device, though it does only exist on iOS at this point.  Infinity Blade II is a must-own title for iPad an iPhone gamers wanting to see the cutting edge of mobile gaming and visual design, due to the combination of console-level graphical quality and surprisingly tactile combat. It makes good on the promise of the first title, adding more story, more giant beasts to slay, and a continually satisfying challenge throughout.

Horn
Released: August
Platforms: iOS, Android
Developer: Phosphor Games
Horn surprises with a well-developed fantasy world, solid controls, and a quirky sense of humor that permeates across encounters, levels, and character design. Horn is a delight to play; it’s also farther away from Zynga’s core casual business as I thought was even possible. The platforming is well done, the three-dimensional environments are fun to explore and play through, and the enemies are a striking mix of science and magic.

Super Hexagon
Released: August
Platforms: iOS
Developer: Terry Cavanagh
Those who like punishing, tough retro arcade games are bound to thrill to Super Hexagon, developed by indie darling Terry Cavanagh. The point is to rotate your triangle-shaped avatar around a pulsating, spinning, chip-tune spewing hexagon, avoiding the walls that close in on the center in wave after endless wave. Survival is the point of Super Hexagon, moving minimally and staying one step ahead of things as they spin, flash, and pound like a bad trip at a rave.

Waking Mars
Released: February
Platforms: iOS, Android
Developer: Tiger Style Games
Waking Mars takes you on a trip to the red planet to explore, trapping you underneath the surface. You’ll need to navigate a maze-like system of caves, teeming with varieties of plant life that you’ll need to harness to survive, and, eventually, terraform Mars with. If you liked Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, you’ll enjoy Waking Mars for the story, the gorgeous artwork, and a compelling science fictional storyline set on one of our favorite planets to dream about.

Rayman Jungle Run
Released: September
Platforms: iOS, Android
Developer: Ubisoft
The smartest thing Ubisoft could have done with its popular Rayman franchise was to release it to iOS and Android, not as a copycat game full of poorly translated controls schemes, but as a mobile title built specifically for the platform’s touch-based control systems. Rayman Jungle Run is an endless runner, like Canabalt or Jetpack Joyride, but it trades on the glorious cel-shaded illustration, cartoony animation, and delightful ukulele-infused soundtrack that made the console version of Rayman: Origins such fun to play. That joy translates well to the mobile version of Rayman as you jump, swing, and soar across several well designed levels with smooth touch controls.

The best Star Wars movie is The Empire Strikes Back, and the coolest planet from that movie, Hoth, has inspired some of the finest video game adaptations of the Star Wars franchise.

Developer Rovio is hoping they can tap into some of that magic with the latest update to Angry Birds Star Wars that introduces the pink bird as Princess Leia and unlocks 20 levels that take place on (or in the space around) the planet Hoth.

Of course, snow, ice, and Imperial AT-ATs fill the Hoth stages. The new Leia bird helps the player topple those towering enemy units with her tractor-beam ability. This move sucks in materials, causing structures to come tumbling down.

Hoth is available now in the update for anyone who purchased Angry Birds Star Wars on iOS or Android.

Check out the cute video promo for the update:

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Angry Birds Star Wars. What?

That was my initial reaction when I first heard about this unusual crossover for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac. Those two brands seemingly have nothing in common, with the possible exception of their massive market appeal. I feared this would be another lazy cash-grab exploiting the beloved characters from George Lucas’s expansive universe.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that Angry Birds Star Wars is one of the more fun and charming Star Wars game in some time.

What you’ll like

Best of two worlds
Developer Rovio splits the levels in Angry Birds Star Wars between traditional ones and stages based on the more recent Angry Birds Space. You catapult your miffed poultry at buildings and enemies all in the hopes of clearing the screen of your foes while causing as much damage as possible. The space levels work with the same concept, but gravity (or the lack of) plays a more important role.

Using both types of gameplay gives Angry Birds Star Wars levels more variety than its predecessors, and it’s a fitting design decision since the famous movies take place both in space and on more solid ground.

Use the force, birds
Every colored bird from past games in the series has their own special ability. This is still the case here, but instead of dropping exploding eggs or slightly increasing your speed you’ll be swinging lightsabers and shooting blasters.

These powers are appropriate, fun, and offer a few surprise twists. Luke Skywalker can swing his lightsaber around him with a tap of the screen, but you can also use this move to reflect enemy blaster shots. Han Solo can shoot his own gun in any direction you tap on the screen, but you can also use metallic surfaces to bounce his shot around the area.

Clever level design brings out the best in these abilities, with many of them forcing to think of clever strategies outside of just shooting your birds toward your targets. Sometimes you’ll have to use Obi Wan’s force push to topple a stack of crates onto a group of enemies, for instance.

Great use of the setting
Some fans get upset whenever their beloved Star Wars isn’t taken with total seriousness (remember all the fuss made about the dancing game in Star Wars Kinect?) I have no problem seeing sillier takes on the series, so I’m more than happy to laugh along with Angry Birds Star Wars. It’s hard not to smile when see you all of these iconic characters reimagined as limbless poultry and pork.

The game even manages to cleverly re-create some iconic moments from Episode IV, like the trash compactor scene (which you can use in a level to efficiently squish some Imperial piggies) and the famous trench run from the movie’s climax.

I have to give equal credit for what is not in the game, specifically anything from the terrible prequel trilogy. All of the initial levels take place during the classic, original film. You can also buy an additional set of levels focusing on Luke’s Jedi training on swampy Dagobah during The Empire Strikes Back, and a free update promises to add stages set on snowy Hoth from that same movie. This means you’ll be flinging around Luke, Han, and Chewie without a single Jar Jar Binks or Anakin in sight.

What you won’t like

Franchise fatigue
After Angry Birds, Angry Birds Season, Angry Birds Rio, and Angry Birds Space we’ve had a lot of this series in a relatively short time. If the Angry Birds bug bit you in the past, it’s likely that you, like me, have already played hundreds of levels of this relatively simple game.

Angry Birds Star Wars is clever enough to still feel fresh most of the time you’re playing it, but the game can’t escape the fact that this is all familiar territory, even with the nice Star Wars dressing. The franchise fatigue is likely to hit you much harder if you aren’t a fan of Star Wars, which deprives you of the ability to enjoy the game’s many nods at the classic movies.

Conclusion

Is Angry Birds Star Wars an easy cross promotion between two hugely popular properties? Sure. But who cares when it’s this much fun to play? Angry Birds Star Wars is far from the most original game you’ll play, but the addicting formula still works great, and fans of the classic movies will love seeing this silly take on Luke Skywalker’s adventures.

Clever design and fun powers make this a great place for newbies to see why the series has become a cultural phenomenon if they haven’t experienced Angry Birds before. If you are a Star Wars fan, then this will be your favorite take on poultry-flinging yet.

Score:  85/100

Angry Birds Star Wars is out now for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Mobile-game juggernaut Angry Birds has been downloaded more than a billion times, and publisher Rovio isn’t done with it yet. The company launched Angry Birds Star Wars on mobile devices last Friday, and it also debuted a whole line of Hasbro-made toys featuring mash-ups of Angry Birds and Star Wars characters. The double-barreled launch shows that the feathered franchise’s slingshot gameplay can be applied to just about any theme, and Rovio could very well have an endless series on its hands — as long as fans don’t get tired of it.

Rovio launched its fourth Angry Birds title this year as part of its ambition to turn its characters into the next Mickey Mouse. Peter Vesterbacka, chief marketing officer of the Helsinki-based outfit, said in an interview with GamesBeat that Rovio hasn’t hit a wall yet when it comes to growth. In fact, he said the company no longer thinks of itself as just a game maker. Like Disney, Rovio is shooting to become a broad entertainment organization. Here’s a transcript of our edited interview.

GamesBeat: So how long has this been in the making for you?

Peter Vesterbacka: The contract was finalized in March. We work pretty fast. We got the physical products out in record time. When we first talked to Hasbro, they said it was impossible, but then they surprised us and themselves. We got them out sooner and in much bigger volume than we thought. It’s been a great experience from that perspective. It was very fast. We’ve been working on the game about a year.

GamesBeat: What’s unique about the design of this game?

Vesterbacka: We’ve taken the best of Angry Birds with the best of Star Wars and merged it in a very organic way. If you have your Luke bird, it’s like the traditional red bird, but now it has a lightsaber. Or Han Solo meets the yellow bird with lasers. One thing we used, as an example, now the pigs also shoot lasers in some levels. When you then use the lightsaber, you can deflect the lasers. It’s these funny little details from the movies that [make it fun]. In the Star Wars movies, you always see the lasers bouncing left and right and going everywhere. We made sure you can see that in the game. There’s an amazing attention to detail. We worked very closely with Lucas.

GamesBeat: I like the stormtrooper piggies.

Vesterbacka: Yeah! They’re funny. That’s what we loved about the collaboration. It’s peanut butter and jelly. It works. Everything fits. You see a lot of very forced collaborations, but this is just fun.

GamesBeat: Now you have four games a year coming out. Do you think you’re going to maintain that pace?

Vesterbacka: Yeah. It’s a good pace. Next year we’ll probably do four, maybe five.

GamesBeat: Amazing Alex was a new intellectual property that you launched. Are you encouraged by the sales results, or does it suggest you should do more Angry Birds-all-the-time stuff?

Vesterbacka: I’d say it’s a bit of both. On one side, we’re very happy with the numbers for Alex. If you look at it as a new franchise, totally new everything, from that perspective it’s very good. But if you compare it to when we do a new Angry Birds game, those numbers are … a bit bigger.

Still, we always have to think about when we launched Angry Birds. We have flyers saying something like, “Angry Birds: 500,000 downloads!” Now it’s like, “Really? How could we have thought that was anything?” But, at the time, it was a big deal. When I first talked about how we were going to get 100 million downloads, everyone at the company thought I was crazy. Outside the company too. One-hundred million? Only Tetris had done that. Now it’s like a footnote.

Look at our Bad Piggies launch. We launched on the 27th [of September]. It’s been number one until now, when we bumped it down with Angry Birds Star Wars. The amazing launch is part of the Angry Birds universe — it piggybacks on that — but it’s off to a much faster start than Angry Birds. That’s also true for Amazing Alex. We have more downloads than we did for the original Angry Birds at this point. So everything is relative.

With Alex, we don’t have 100 million downloads yet, but we need to keep our history in mind. We made 51 games before Angry Birds. Not all of them were Angry Birds. On the one hand, we’re happy, but on the other hand, we’re always hungry for more. We need to keep that hunger.

We’ll continue doing more Angry Birds, more Bad Piggies, more Amazing Alex, more other things. If you look at Rovio, you could say Angry Birds is our Coke, but we’ll keep doing Sprite and Fanta. Angry Birds is our main brand, but it’s OK to do smaller things. Smaller for us can still be tens of millions.

GamesBeat: So what’s different about how Rovio can launch new titles?

Vesterbacka: We’re learning new things every day. At the same time, we’ve grown a bit. We’re now 500 people. With more people, that always introduces new challenges. But we’re happy with how fast we can move. If you look at last year, we launched one game, Angry Birds Rio. This year, we launched Angry Birds Space, Amazing Alex, Bad Piggies, and Angry Birds Star Wars. We had four big launches, and that’s just the games side. We’ve done tons on the animation side. Merchandising is seeing explosive growth. Everything is growing constantly.

GamesBeat: How do you keep this going? Media people are starting to like the angle of, “Well, this fad has to die out soon.”

Vesterbacka: Well, look at Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse has been around since 1928, and he seems to be still alive and kicking. Hello Kitty, since 1974. Mario, quite a while. Star Wars, 1977, still going strong. There’s always people who speculate about when we’ll do this or that thing. We’re not worried about it. It’s our job to keep it fresh. We’re working closely with Sanrio in Japan, the Hello Kitty guys, and now of course with Lucas. You could also have looked at Star Wars as a fad and argued it wasn’t going anywhere….

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This isn’t a review: It’s kind of awesome to fling a lightsaber-wielding Luke Skywalker-haired bird across a Death Star docking bay.

That’s right — the new Angry Birds Star Wars is out now for iOS and Android on the Apple App Store and Google Play market. The new physics-based puzzler from developer Rovio is $.99 on iPhone and free on Android, although you can get a tablet-optimized HD version on Android for $2.99.

The game combines the pull-and-fling gameplay of Angry Birds and Angry Birds Space with the aesthetics of Star Wars. As we reported previously, Rovio brought in some of the most memorable aspects from George Lucas’s sci-fi universe, like  lightsabers, Force powers, and blasters, for the birds to use against the evil piggies. Action takes place across many of the franchise’s memorable planets and ships; it starts, just as in A New Hope, on Luke’s home planet of Tatooine.

While many feared this would be a quick grab at cash, it turns out that it’s actually kind of awesome. I haven’t played most of the game, so this isn’t a review, but if you like Angry Birds at all, I recommend it based on my time slinging Angry Bird Han Solo at piggy Stormtroopers.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Ever since George Lucas sold his Star Wars empire to Disney, the world has wanted to know: What does this mean for the upcoming mobile game Angry Birds Star Wars?

OK, well, maybe no one asked that, but we could answer it now that the game is a few days away from its Thursday release for iOS devices and Android. Developer Rovio released a new trailer that illustrates the Star Wars-ness of this newest Angry Birds.

In previous Angry Birds games, players could use special abilities that would speed up or multiply the birds while they were in the air. In this Star Wars variation, Rovio gives the player a lightsaber to deflect enemy fire and a Han Solo blaster to shoot the piggies dressed like Stormtroopers. The Obi-Wan Kenobi bird uses Force powers, and the Chewbacca bird is simply big.

Angry Birds doesn’t skimp on the Star Wars visuals. Early levels are set on Tatooine while a piggy-shaped Death Star hangs ominously in the background of later stages. In fact, it looks like the game will follow the plot of A New Hope.

Interestingly, the pigs often take the form of the sci-fi franchise’s enemy TIE fighters, but the Millennium Falcon maintains its traditional form, even though the name could easily lend itself to a bird-related pun. Congratulations to Rovio on restraining themselves.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It’s official: Rovio is taking the Angry Birds to a galaxy far, far away in November.

The Finnish developer and LucasFilm announced today plans for Angry Birds Star Wars. The game comes out on Android, iOS, Windows Phone, PC, and Mac on November 8.

“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 a galaxy far, far away,” said Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio’s chief marketing officer. “As a big Star Wars fan myself, I’m really excited about this new universe. The Force is definitely strong with this one.”

This partnership encompasses more than just a new mobile game. Rovio also plans to bring Angry Birds Star Wars merchandise to retailers starting Oct. 28. Fans will be able to show their very specific love for Angry Birds Star Wars with apparel, costumes, plush toys, and more.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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