Entertainment Inside Us (Insidus)

Finland’s Rovio Entertainment has partnered with Washington-based game developer Legends of Learning to launch new Angry Birds games with a focus on education. Based on the Angry Birds characters, the games will teach STEM concepts—such as force, collisions and how to measure angles—to kids ages five to 14. The Legends of Learning online platform will release the games this fall. Launched in 2017, Legends of Learning is a learning hub for elementary and middle school students. Game-based learning improves children’s grades, says Legends of Learning CEO and co-founder Vadim Polikov. The platform, which contains more than 2,000 educational video games, is mostly free but also offers paid options for teachers. It also allows kids to customize avatars by paying a subscription. It’s used by about 10 million teachers and students in the US, according to a release. Rovio has long seen its Angry Birds games—which have been downloaded over five billion times—as a potential educational tool. The

Sega, the Japanese-headquartered video game company best known in the West for its Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, is acquiring Angry Birds developer Rovio, the companies announced today. The Finnish headquartered mobile games developer will be acquired for €706 million (around $775 million), which The Wall Street Journal notes represents a roughly a 19 percent premium over its share price at close on Friday. The deal is expected to close by the end of September. In a press release, Sega said it hopes to use “Rovio’s distinctive know-how in live service mobile game operation, to bring Sega’s current and new titles to the global mobile gaming market.” It sounds like a similar aim to what Sega’s rival Nintendo has been doing with its franchises, with smartphone releases like Mario Kart Tour, Pokémon Go, and Super Mario Run. Sega also wants to help Rovio “expand its platform outside of mobile gaming.” “Among the rapidly growing global gaming market, the mobile gaming market has especially h