Angry Birds’ Maker Rovio Ups Its Game, Buys Futuremark’s Games Studio

Rovio has made a killing out of its Angry Birds franchise, and today it announced a deal that points to how the mobile games maker is hard at work developing what could well be the follow up to that: it has bought Futuremark Games Studio, the gaming arm of software developer Futuremark.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The team behind Futuremark Games Studio, based in Finland, like Rovio, are all coming over in the deal. Games the developer has made include Unstoppable Gorg and Hungribles, as well as Shattered Horizon — which, like Angry Birds Space, plays with the zero gravity concept.

The deal signifies a couple of things. First, Rovio is making some definitive moves to enhance its developer expertise in cutting-edge mobile games. Just as Angry Birds Space, released last week, is using a new physics engine for the gameplay, this points to the company looking for the latest innovations.

“They are an incredibly talented and experienced team, and we are thrilled to have them on board,” Mikael Hed, Rovio Entertainment’s CEO said in a release. “Rovio’s success is founded on the excellence of our team, and Futuremark Games Studio is going to be a superb addition.”

Second, it shows there is some consolidation underway in mobile gaming at the moment, with smaller studios getting picked up by bigger players. That’s something Bart Decrem, VP of mobile games at Disney, also talked about with TechCrunch the other week. (Decrem implied that Disney was looking for specific hires rather than acquiring studios — although with this move from Rovio, who knows what might happen next.)

This is Rovio’s second acquisition in the last year. The company also bought Kombo Animation Studio last summer for an undisclosed amount.

Futuremark’s CEO Jukka Makinen says that the remaining company will continue to focus on benchmarking software, used by the gaming industry to test and improve the performance of their games.

“Future will now focus on supporting gamers and industry with 3DMark,” he said in a statement. The company is planning to release a new version of the software later this year that will let developers test across different platforms and form factors.

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