The Angry Birds developers, Rovio, may be planning to launch their own payment system and a new version of the game for Valentine’s Day, but turning the insanely successful series into a social gaming network might be their most ambitious move to date. According to a blog post from Robert Scoble, a Rovio executive hinted at the platform during the European DLD conference.
Now I have some inside knowledge. I was talking with an exec who works at Rovio the other night at the DLD conference and he hinted that Angry Birds would be turning on a gaming network soon.
Why? Well, what’s the worst thing about Angry Birds? That when you get to a new level on one device, all your other devices don’t know about it.
Although no real details have been provided and this is all based on pure speculation from Scoble, an Angry Birds network with social functionalities would allow users to easily restore complete levels, data and preferences on every device they own, or organize match-making directly within the app without relying on external infrastructures like Game Center and OpenFeint. Rovio could pull off its own social platform to aggregate and analyze social data, like users’ behavior, tastes and average scores. Furthermore, the social-powered Angry Birds could become a platform to share personal information like books and movies you enjoy, like on Facebook.
There’s no doubt Angry Birds’ future will be full of surprises. Here’s to hoping Rovio won’t cross the line that separates an addictive iOS game from the social mayhem we’re seeing these days.
