Rovio fires employees, tanks are out for Android, women with children shop more often - and other news of the week for a mobile developer

Moms as a target audience

WildTangent published the results of a new study, in which 80% of mothers play mobile games at least once a week, and 68% of pregnant women play games several times a day.

As a result of the study, the audience was divided into four groups: pregnant women, mothers with babies, mothers with babies, and mothers with children aged 5 to 17 years. The least time was spent on games for women with babies, which is obvious, but 76% of them play while the baby sleeps, and 55% play when they are bored. More than 58% of women with babies play to rest and relax. Pregnant women devote the most time to games, which is an average of one hour more per week than women with babies or toddlers.
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The study also showed that 37% of mothers with children over 5 years old and 34% of expectant mothers buy things that they advertise in games.

Rovio cuts staff

In Rovio confirmed the information about the dismissal of employees. As a result of the closure of the office in Tampere, 110 people lost their jobs, which is about 14% of the company's total workforce. Initially planned to reduce 130 jobs.

The closing of the Tampere studio actually means that the entire company is now based in Espoo, where Angry Birds were released in 2009.

After a significant increase in staff in 2012, the company's profit fell almost
twice. Rovio CFO Herkko Soininen said that the reason for the decline
Profit was the development of the company in the field of animation and merchandising. Despite this, Rovio is still planning a premiere of the animated film based on the game Angry Birds in 2016.

World of Tanks Blitz released on Android!

Along with the version for Android , an update 1.5 appeared for the game. In it, Wargaming has added technology to the UK, expanding its fleet of tanks to more than 100 vehicles.

World of Tanks Blitz was introduced in March 2013, and after 12 months began closed beta testing of the game on iOS. More than 150 thousand people took part in it. In May, residents of Scandinavia got access to the game, and for all other iOS users, the doors were opened in June. On the GameRankings aggregator, the game received an average rating of 85%.
The Android version has already scored more than 500 thousand downloads, and the average score is above 4 points.

Even on a smartphone with a small screen, it is quite comfortable to play, and on the tablets there are no problems at all. There are some minor problems with the game through the 3G network, but there is not much discomfort. The game was cross-platform and supports accounts from iOS versions. To run World of Tanks Blitz, the device should have a GPU chip no worse than Mali-400MP, Adreno 320, PoweVR SGX544 or Tegra 3. The full list of supported phones and tablets is published on the developer’s website .

Zynga promotes The Killers songs in his farm

Zynga and Apps for (RED) have become partners of Jimmy Kimmel and The Killers music group in a charity event of the mobile game FarmVille 2: Country Escape. Up until December 7, players could listen to the new song by The Killers “Joel the Lump of Coal” for free, play the game, or buy it by donating to the campaign against AIDS.

The song could be listened to for free an unlimited number of times through a special application window. Also, the game offered a link to download songs from iTunes. The purchase cost the players $ 1.29, and the whole amount was completely spent on charity.

This is not the first case of support of a mobile farm by a popular artist.
Since 2009, more than 5 million users of Zynga products have participated in 150 promotions, supporting 50 million charitable institutions.

Kabam and Marvel expand partnership

This year, the mobile game developer Kabam and Marvel Entertainment, known for their superheroes, began working with the mobile game Marvel: Contest of Champions.

Now the companies are planning to expand the scope of interaction. The new game will be PRG, and Kabam from San Francisco is planning to work on it. Alas, while there is no specifics, only common words that the joint efforts of the company have achieved great success and mutual praises.

I'd like to believe that the output will be a new and really good game, which is interesting to play. But it is difficult to count on it. Unfortunately, in such situations, big companies often try to avoid risks for players and instead of creating a new one, clone existing and already proven games.

Personally, as a player, I feel sad about such a monopolization of the market, which means that it will be more and more difficult for new games to make their way to their consumers.
And nevertheless we will be optimists, we will be patient with patience and we believe in the best.