Rovio announces release date for Bad Piggies

Over the past few days, there have been speculations that something out of the house of Rovio would be coming soon. Ever since the first Angry Birds game was launched, players had the single option of playing the game with the birds and this led quite a few folk to feel bad for the green piggies, no matter how bad they may have been. After setting up Facebook and Twitter pages under the name Bad Piggies, Rovio has now officially announced the launch date of another game in the Angry Birds franchise – Bad Piggies.

As per the announcement, Rovio Entertainment, the creator of Angry Birds, has announced its newest game, Bad Piggies, which will launch on September 27 for devices such as iOS, Android and Mac. The brand claims that this innovative game turns the franchise on its head by letting the fans play as the pigs. It comes with all new, never-before-seen gameplay and one of the most interesting aspects of this game is that there is no slingshot in this game.

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It’s the piggies turn now!

Speaking at the announcement of Bad Piggies, Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio said, “There’s a lot of empathy towards the lovable enemies from the Angry Birds games, and we’ve been constantly asked: what about the pigs’ side of the story? Bad Piggies gives you the chance to play as the second-most-loved characters in the Angry Birds universe, and explore this rich world through their green eyes.”

Rovio has announced that this upcoming game will be launched for iOS, Android and Mac on September 27, while the versoins for Windows Phone, Windows 8 and PC will follow shortly thereafter.

“We’ve had a lot of fun creating a totally new and unique gameplay experience,” said Petri Järvilehto, EVP Games at Rovio. “There’s so much more to these pigs than what is seen in the Angry Birds games, and Bad Piggies is the first glimpse into what’s going on in the imaginative and ingenious minds of the pigs.”

The Angry birds series has been undeniably successful. Starting with its debut on iOS devices and eventual ports into other platforms, the franchise has proved extremely popular. At one point, the Playstation 3 version of Angry Birds even became the best selling game on PSN. The company announced 1 billion downloads for Angry Birds in May. The download count, however, includes all platforms and all the Angry Birds games that Rovio has made, which are: Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Space, as well as the free, light versions of the games.

Rovio has seen massive success with the series. The first game debuted for iOS devices in 2009 for $0.99, with the Android release shortly after, which was free and ad-supported. When the game was in development, the folks at Rovio liked the idea of building wingless and legless birds. To choose an enemy for the birds, they thought pigs were appropriate as the swine flu epidemic was in the news at the time. Rovio partnered with Chillingo to publish the first Angry Birds app to the iOS App Store. After that, Rovio self-published all its Angry Birds titles with the exception of the PlayStation Portable version of the game, which was published under the production of Abstraction Games and distrubuted by Chillingo.