The Nokia-Microsoft partnership may be a success after all: Uber-popular mobile game Angry Birds is coming to Windows Phone 7, the game’s developer, Rovio Mobile, tells Pocket-lint. Not only that, but Rovio has confirmed that there are also plans to release the game in 3D.
In an interview, “Mighty Eagle” Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio North America’s head Angry Bird — “the one with the balls,” according to his Twitter account — reveals that the company is currently “working on” a version of the game for Microsoft’s mobile operating system, but says that their getting approval for the app hasn’t been easy. “Let’s just say, Microsoft has a lot of lawyers,” Vesterbacka said.
The hang-up, however, has nothing to do with the fact that Microsoft unlawfully used the Angry Birds logo (i.e. without Rovio’s consent) on its website last October as part of their promotion for the launch of Windows Phone 7 (WP7). But even at the time of the skirmish, which mostly played out on Twitter, Rovio made clear that they were willing to work with Microsoft on a WP7 version of their game.
A 3D version of Angry Birds, which could be released on the Nintendo 3DS and the newly-announced LG Optimus 3D smartphone, was also confirmed by Vesterbacka, though exact details were hard to come by. “We’ve built a lot of 3D games before,” Vesterbacka said, “it’s not like it’s a lot of learning in order to recreate the technology with Angry Birds.”
The move onto WP7 would only be the latest in a steady line of expansions for Angry Birds. The game, which has reportedly been downloaded more than 75 million times since its 2009 launch, is already available on most the widely-used mobile platforms: iPhone, Android and Nokia’s Symbian (RIP). Recently, Rovio teamed up with 20th Century Fox to created a co-branded version of Angry Birds to help promote the release of the animated CGI feature film Rio, which comes out this summer.
Outside the mobile realm, an Angry Birds television series is possibly in the works. And Rovio is said to be currently working on a multi-player console version of the game.
A release date for neither the Windows Phone 7 version of Angry Birds, nor the 3D version, has not yet been confirmed.
