Rovio, the developer behind blockbuster sensation ‘Angry Birds,’ has raised $42 million during a round of funding led by venture capitalist firms.
One of the firms is Accel Partners, which has vested interests in Facebook, Groupon and AdMob, among other mobile or social companies.
Angry Birds currently has 40 million active players across Android, iOS and PC platforms, and downloads have topped 75 million.
Outside of game downloads, Angry Birds plush toy sales have surpassed 2 million, breaking into the mainstream retail channels.
The developer will use the money for “strategic expansions.”
Result for: mainstream
Pioneer and Buffalo have introduced the world’s first Blu-ray writers with BDXL support, the standard that was approved by the BDA in June.
BDXL discs are quad-layer 128GB Blu-ray discs. The standard also allows for triple-layer BDs with 100GB capacity.
Available soon, the companies have shown off the external BRXL-6U2 and the internal BRXL-6FBS-BK.
Both writers can handle up to quad-layer discs at 4x speeds for the higher capacities.
Support for BD-R/BD-R DL and BD-RE/BD-RE DL are standard.
On the downside, there are no mainstream players that support the standard with only Panasonic and Sharp even introducing players, all of which cost over $2500. There is no word on pricing for the writers.
For now, the format is targeted at professional applications such as archiving and medial imaging.
Result for: mainstream
In 2008, Apple CEO Steve Jobs made headlines when he called Blu-ray “a bag of hurt.”
At the time, Jobs said: “Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.”
Two years later and Blu-ray is mainstream but Jobs is still anti-Blu. Last month he said the following: “Blu-ray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD - like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.”
This week, the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association) has responded, saying Jobs is wrong in his assertions that Blu-ray is just for a niche market and that it will soon be replaced by streaming and HD downloads.
Says the BDA: “According to market analysis, Blu-ray has a rate of adoption very similar to that of DVD at the same seniority (18 million U.S. homes with Blu-ray in Q4 ‘10 vs the same numbers as the penetration of DVD in Q1 of the fifth year on the market). We agree that the Internet will increase its importance (for streaming and downloads) but we do believe that physical media like Blu-ray Disc will continue to dominate for many years, due to ease of use, high durability, and certainly the ability to deliver a high definition experience and quality available anywhere.”
