Angry Birds 2 experienced its best-ever year in 2018, making a significant contribution to developer Rovio’s mobile revenue, Sensor Tower reported.

The game, which launched in mid-2015, generated revenue of more than $116 million through in-app purchases in 2018. This was up 47 per cent year-on-year and accounted for a significant proportion of Rovio’s total mobile revenue of $220 million.

“Angry Birds 2 has been one of mobile gaming’s biggest success stories since launching as the free-to-play sequel to the premium Angry Birds. Rovio’s continuous tuning and tweaking of its in-game economy has led to its player spending during the past 12 months growing to nearly four-times its first-year revenue,” Sensor Tower noted.

More than 50 per cent ($63.8 million) of the 2018 revenue was generated from users in the US. Germany was the next-highest market by revenue, albeit accounting for a fraction of the US sum ($6 million).

Sensor Tower data shows Angry Birds 2 ranked number 84 for overall mobile game revenue worldwide in 2018, up from 110 in 2017.

Evolution
Rovio announced a new addition to the franchise called Angry Birds Dream Blast. In a statement it said the release “follows one of the company’s core strategic objectives for 2019 – to grow its games business by launching at least two new games throughout the year”.

Its CEO, Kati Levoranta, added: “Moving forward, with one other game currently in soft launch and multiple games in different stages of development, we’re in a strong position to execute our games strategy during this special tenth anniversary year for the Angry Birds brand.”