According to a new report by The Wall Street Journal, SEGA is reportedly close to finalizing a deal to acquire Rovio Entertainment. This company is responsible for developing the Angry Birds video game franchise for approximately one billion dollars.
The article suggests that the agreement may be reached as early as the beginning of the following week, provided that negotiations do not “break down or drag out.” The company’s likelihood of being acquired has occurred in the past and now. At the beginning of this year, there were discussions on the possibility of Rovio Entertainment being acquired by Playtika Holding Corp. of Israel for a price greater than $800 million. Those discussions, however, came to a close in March and still need to produce a conclusive agreement.
Rovio Entertainment has yet to be able to produce anything that even comes near to the success of Angry Birds, even though the game produced a massive amount of cash.
Rovio claims that Angry Birds was the first mobile game to reach the milestone of 1 billion downloads. The company recently reached the milestone of 5 billion downloads across all of its games.
A move of this magnitude for SEGA, which would allow the business to establish a greater presence within the mobile sector, would constitute an acquisition of this nature. SEGA has previously stated that it views mobile gaming as having the potential to “strengthen global mobile and online games.”
Given the company’s robust intellectual assets, it would be easy for SEGA to leverage Rovio to improve its selection of mobile games. The video game companies SEGA and Rovio Entertainment still need to provide an official response to the report.
What are your thoughts on the news that SEGA has acquired Rovio Entertainment, which developed Angry Birds?
