Angry Birds Rio manages 10 million downloads in 10 days

Apr. 4, 2011 (8:30 am) By: Brian Osborne

It seems that mobile phone users are still Angry Birds crazy and Rovio may have another hit on its hands. Through the developer’s Twitter account it was tweeted, “10 in 10:-) Angry Birds Rio breaking all records. A massive thanks to all our fans!!!!” That was a bit coded, so after some further investigation it became clear what Rovio meant was the new game has been downloaded over 10 million times in 10 days since its launch on March 22nd.
Angry Birds Rio has introduced a number of firsts for its developer including the fact that the game is not traditional for the Angry Birds franchise. It is the first one created as a result of a partnership between Rovio and 20th Century Fox since the game is based on the animated movie RIO. Though you won’t find the Angry Birds characters in the new movie, you will find characters from the movie in the game. Angry Birds Rio breaks from previous games in that the goal is not to smash into pigs. The target for the birds this time is smuggled bird cages in a warehouse. As cages break, the birds within them fly to freedom.
Rovio also took quite a bold move with the game when it came to the Android platform. When the developer ported its original Angry Birds game and Angry Birds Seasons to Android it introduced them to users through Google’s Android Marketplace. Rather than offering the game for $0.99 like it did on iTunes, the games were a free download, though players had to deal with ads while playing.
When it came to the launch of Angry Birds Rio it seems that the Android Marketplace was not Rovio’s first choice. As a result, Amazon’s Appstore for Android was the first to offer an ad-free version of the game. It is expected to eventually be offered as a $0.99 download, but for the moment Amazon has decided to offer it for free as part of a limited promotion.
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