Angry Birds Flies Away from Windows Phone

Late to embrace Windows phone, Angry Birds maker Rovio was also late to abandon the failed mobile platform, with the firm revealing to customers this week that it will no longer update its Windows phone titles.

“Rovio games are no longer developed on Windows phones,” an email from the Rovio Support Team notes. “The only devices that are still supported and updated are Android and iOS devices. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

OK, that makes sense. Windows phone accounts for just a tiny and declining slice of the mobile market, with Android and iOS controlling over 95 percent combined usage and market share.

Not helping matters, while Rovio was once the biggest mobile game maker in the world, it has fallen on hard times in recent years, and for familiar reasons: Its me-too Angry Birds sequels have delivered diminishing returns, and the firm hasn’t been able to duplicate its original success with new games. So sticking with just popular mobile platforms makes sense.

This retreat is still painful, of course, but its important to remember that Rovio was never a big supporter of Windows phone anyway. The firm didn’t release its original Angry Birds title on Windows phone until June 2011, a full 18 months after it had first shipped on iOS. (And Rovio shipped two Angry Birds sequels on iOS and Android before delivering a single Windows phone title.) Furthermore, at $2.99 Angry Birds for Windows phone was three times the cost of the iOS version at its launch.

So, yes, it’s another nail in the coffin. But that coffin was already stuffed full of nails. At some point you just become numb to the regular drumbeat of these Windows phone retreats, don’t you?

Note: I believe that Windows Central was the first to report the bad news.

Update: I originally mentioned Windows 10 here, but Rovio’s email doesn’t address Windows 10, sorry. –Paul