Following its first swallow-up in June of last year when it acquired Kombo Animation Studio, Angry Birds creator Rovio has just aimed its slingshot and hit dead on at an even bigger target – none other than Futuremark's “Games Studio” division.
A formal announcement has been given on Rovio's website about this acquisition, occuring promptly after its well received launch of the new Angry Birds Space title for iOS, Android, Mac and PC along with a kaboodle of merchandising and books etc.
Funnily enough, when reflecting on Futuremark Games Studio's creations of the past, in particular Shattered Horizon, it too features zero-gravity physics not unlike the latest Angry Birds instalment.
While it's not certain as yet how exactly Rovio intends to harness the additional power of having Futuremark Games Studio as part of its continuing software creation arsenal, Futuremark has stated that its main focus will remain on providing the ultimate in game benchmarking software with the next version of 3DMark to appear before the year is out with cross-platform support across a range of form factors (including Windows 8 powered tablets). A new version of PCMark for Windows 8 will also be outed this year.
KitGuru says: No mention has been made about the cost of this acquisition, but whatever it was Rovio obviously have a plan to leverage off it in spades and give us something particularly sweet (Angry Birds in 3D?) to soak up more of our hours on gaming addiction in the months/years to come.
Oh the irony….the company that created one of the least demanding games out there did so well financially to buy out a company that has created one of the most demanding benchamrk software…..and for what?