I know I give Rovio a lot of criticism, but when Angry Birds Match came out recently it was just inevitable for me to make a post about it.
Just what is wrong with Rovio? Why did they feel the need to come out with yet again another boring, generic matching game? This time they've plastered hatchlings all over it because they know that nobody's gonna get it otherwise. Even with all of its promotion, it's failing in the Play Store with roughly 500,000 downloads.
And just for the record, that's exactly what it deserves, and it's what Rovio deserves as well for coming up with such bland games. It's literally just a redone version of Angry Birds Fight!, which they ended up discontinuing.
Don't even get me started on the awful Angry Birds Evolution, which is weakly stumbling by with roughly a million downloads on the Play Store.
As comparison, Angry Birds Stella POP! managed to gain 5 million downloads in its first couple of weeks on both the App Store and Play Store. (having 10 million alone on the Play Store at the moment)
In fact, Stella managed to rack up over 30 million downloads half a year from the release of the game, more than any of Rovio's newer releases have managed to get. (for example, Angry Birds Action was released a year ago and struggles with 5 million downloads)
While I can't explain why they discontinued Stella but release these games, I can theorize a little bit, and I believe the two main things guiding them is this:
1, their movie profits, and 2, their laziness.
The second one may seem a bit ridiculous, but let me explain.
Ever since the movie, which is the 2nd highest grossing video game movie of all time, they haven't really had much issues with money. Thus, if they have this new movie fanbase and money, do they really need to put much effort on their games anymore? They can spew out 10 of these simple, cheap matching games because they know a small fraction of people will still get them, so they make somewhat of a profit without doing much.
That's why they don't update any of their old games anymore, they're too lazy to. They never continued Space or Rio because there's no point of doing so; they won't get anything out of it. By keeping their more popular games alive, like Original or Seasons, people keep the games allowing for Rovio to keep on making money off of those games.Â
Which is (maybe) why they discontinued Stella... think about it.
Once Stella had all that merchandise out, the plush toys, the telepods, was there really a reason to continue the game? I mean, they made all the money out of it, so why bother update it, right?
It's messed up and I hope it isn't actually like this, but it's a reasonable explanation...
It's also why there's so many levels to games like Angry Birds 2 or Angry Birds POP. They're easy to produce. In Angry Birds 2, the levels are SIMULATED. They aren't actually made individually, like previous installments. Every time you replay a level in Angry Birds 2, the structures are randomized.
I don't know anymore, and I don't know why Rovio is making all these awful decisions, but it's pretty clear at this point that we're never gonna get a well produced, good Angry Birds game no matter how much we hope.