Rovio Entertainment—the folks behind the hugely successful Angry Birds franchise have today announced their acquisition of Futuremark Game Studios—the game development wing of the Futuremark benchmarking software giant.
Although unexpected this move certainly makes sense for Rovio—they desperately need an infusion of new blood if they want to move beyond churning out rehashes of Angry Birds and a studio comprised of their fellow Finns, FGS, with two successful iOS projects under their belt (Hungribles and Unstoppable Gorg), makes for the perfect match. Unfortunately not everyone is thrilled with this move, as fans hoping for a sequel to Futuremark’s unique zero gravity FPS Shattered Horizon will be disappointed and those looking forward to the untitled spaceship combat game—which fans have dubbed “Space Opera”—are less than impressed with its cancellation.
Ultimately while this move paves the way for Rovio to crank out some fresh, new content, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever see anything as innovative as Shattered Horizon from FGS again. Rovio have made their not inconsiderable profits from the realm of casual gaming with safe, marketable titles and so long as this continues to pay of for them it doesn’t seem like they will take a chance on something as different as FGS’s spaceship dogfighter.
Articles RSS