Angry Birds is now officially ten years old and just like its arrival dictated the gaming years ahead, its 10th birthday feels like a fitting end to the decade. Angry Birds officially launched on December 11, 2009 and to put this into perspective, the first Angry Birds game was only available at launch on iOS and Maemo (think Nokia) devices. It would be almost another year before an Android version would come out and it was not until 2011 when a Windows Phone version arrived.
Since then, Android has grown to become the largest smartphone operating system on the planet, Windows Phone is all but a memory, and Nokia disappeared from the mobile scene only to very recently return again - albeit this time with the help of Android and not Maemo. During the same time, Angry Birds continued to grow and dominate.
The original game was the first mobile game to ever reach 1 billion downloads and to date the collection of Angry Birds games have been downloaded more than 4.5 billion times. If those records don’t immediately highlight the impact of Angry Birds then how about its status as the first mobile game to be played in space? There's also the fact that it’s been downloaded in Antarctica not once, or twice, but nine times in total. Further cementing its place in history, and as is often the case with popular game franchises, Angry Birds even made its way to Hollywood. In 2016 Rovio Animation teamed up with Columbia Pictures to present The Angry Birds Movie. Overall, it was a good decade for Rovio and Angry Birds but with that decade now coming to a close, a second Angry Birds movie having graced screens this year, and the arrival of the Angry Birds 10th birthday, mobile gaming is now at its next major turning point.
Mobile Gaming Has Moved On From 2009
The state of mobile gaming has evolved massively since the early days of the smartphone. For one thing, smartphones have evolved greatly and now sport larger displays that are more touch responsive and support greater resolutions. There are improvements including the massive upgrade in RAM and processor capabilities that have also dramatically changed the way they function under their exteriors, too. What a smartphone can do now is very different to what it could at the turn of the last decade and that’s also now filtered down to the quality of the games.
Gamers can still find and play many similar games to Angry Birds, but the choice of what consumers can play on mobile devices has never been greater. This year alone has seen the release of some major titles on smartphones, including Activision’s Call of Duty: Mobile, Sky: Children of Light, and Sayonara Wild Hearts, all of which were nominated for best mobile game by The Game Awards 2019.
What’s Ahead in the Next Decade
While it’s difficult to know how people will mobile game in 2029, there’s already indications of where the market is heading. Google recently launched its Stadia game-streaming service in a bid to make console games more accessible, including on smartphones. Google’s own Pixel line of phones are already privy to Stadia and it expected more phones will gain support in the near future. On mobile devices, gaming is going online. The benefit of this is there’s no concerns about the size of the download needed or for that matter, even the limitations of the hardware. While Stadia does have minimum hardware requirements, they are a far cry from the limitations that would be in place if the same games were played locally on a device. Like Google, Apple has also released its subscription-based mobile gaming service, Apple Arcade. Again, this is another subscription service although unlike Stadia, with Apple Arcade consumers can downloads games giving them the option to either play online or offline.
What’s more, services like Arcade and Stadia are not only changing the types of games played on mobile, but how they are played. Both services are compatible with actual controllers and with other devices. Arcade and Stadia subscribers can start playing a game on their mobile device and then continue later on another device, mobile or otherwise. Then there’s the side of mobile gaming that’s moving completely beyond the phone. Virtual reality gaming has proven to be big business recently and while the initial models required a connection to a smartphone, the latest models have detached themselves from the smartphone completely.
Looking back, Angry Birds was a monumental game and it has achieved enough success to cement its place in the mobile gaming history books. However, with 2020 fast approaching the next chapter in mobile gaming is here. The question going forward is whether they’ll be another game that can achieve similar success to what Angry Birds has over the past decade.