据读写网报道，芬兰开发商Rovio正计划推出《愤怒的小鸟》的在线、多人模式游戏版本。这款内容丰富的新版游戏将通过运营商渠道为在线访问该游戏的手机用户提供免数据下载付费支持。如果这个合作项目生效的话，这款足迹遍及各个市场的手机游戏，很有可能在整个移动领域中掀起一轮技术和经济变革。Rovio公司显然有此抱负，其他手机游戏竞争者也有同一个梦想。

angry-birds-walkthrough

免数据包资费版游戏

在最近的SXSW大会现场，Rovio公司宣布他们已通过Facebook投资者Accel Partners等融资4200万美元，以及《愤怒的小鸟》下载量超过1亿次的好消息，这一数据意味着有三分之一的智能手机用户都下载了《愤怒的小鸟》。

除此之外，该公司还表示向第三方开发商推出最新的“通关神鹰”SDK，支持他们在自己的游戏中植入“神关神鹰”这一付费功能，交叉推广Rovio的手机游戏。

Rovio董事长Peter Vesterbacka向媒体表示，Rovio目前正准备与移动运营商联合推出《愤怒的小鸟》免数据包资费版本。有人对这个消息很感兴趣，但也有用户反问：“那又如何？玩《愤怒的小鸟》能用多少流量？”

针对这个问题，记者在SXSW大会采访了另外几位业内人士，大家的一致结论是：Rovio开发免数据包资费版本的游戏，对用户来说是个利好消息。因为这个版本提供了多人模式的在线挑战，而且采用了多媒体格式，其丰富的内容有可能诱使玩家一整天都耗在移动网络上玩游戏。

那么这个在线版本《愤怒的小鸟》又将如何打破移动行业的发展格局？首先要注意的是，它是一款免数据包资费的游戏，性质类似于Facebook与全球移动运营商合作的Facebook Zero项目（备注：2010年Facebook和全球各大运营商协作，访问Facebook Zero的用户将不会额外支付在这个网页上产生的下载流量）。

不过Facebook Zero并不能算是重大的项目，那么《愤怒的小鸟》有没有可能对用户手机话费施加重要影响呢？Vesterbacka表示完全有可能，他对这一点坚信不疑。他同时还指出，在一些非美国地区，手机数据包资费标准更低，有时候甚至根本不计费。

这一新版《愤怒的小鸟》既然需要更多加载数据，那么它究竟会添加什么功能？Vesterbacka对此表示他已经有了多种思路和想法。例如，在该游戏应用中提供视频回放分享功能，在多人模式任务中添加像Facetime一样的视频聊天功能。如此一来，这款游戏不需要通过YouTube渠道，其应用本身就能获得8000万次的视频浏览量。Vesterbacka称这还仅是其中三个设想，如果给他一天时间细想，他还可以说出更多新点子。

对移动运营商的意义

如果移动运营商明知此举可能触及自身利益，他们还有可能免费供应这个版本的游戏吗？针对这个问题，Rovio团队表示希望运营商支持这个做法，运营商可以通过Rovio创建的电子商务运营平台Bad Piggy Bank的营收抽成中获益。游戏邦获悉，Bad Piggy Bank今年初问世时，有人认为其意义已超越了电子商务领域，将成为互联网最值得期待的重要事物之一，这种网站平台功能反映了未来的一种创新趋势。

Rovio希望Bad Piggy Bank能够为世界各地的开发商和运营商广泛采用，以便他们在苹果iTunes的垄断性影响中取得战略平衡。另外，Rovio还表示有意通过其庞大的市场份额，帮助运营商打造更能吸引应用开发商的运营平台。

Vesterbacka称希望能够根据移动网络的需求和特点，制定这个新版游戏的设计和开发决策，让《愤怒的小鸟》成为备受运营商欢迎的大众型应用。例如，让该游戏限制用户每次访问时的信息连接开关次数，让移动运营商的服务更加省心，同时也有助于节省用户的电池耗能。

对应用开发商的意义

有些应用开发商认为，Rovio此举所带来的最大影响是，促使网络运营商为应用开发商创造更理想的运营环境。

AppCircus联合创始人鲁迪·德维利（Rudy De Waele）对Rovio这一计划的看法如下：

“Rovio团队将挑战整个移动行业的生态系统，他们富有远见，将赢得多层次的创新突破。”

“移动运营商深知自己急需开发商的支持，他们知道自己需要变革，但实际上他们骨子里还是不肯与独立开发者合作。Vesterbacka很了解运营商，这一点很有利于打破这种僵局，毕竟Rovio团队曾在旧运营模式下，与大型运营商打过多年交道。”

“一款手机游戏居然也能走进好莱坞的圈子，这是前所未有的事情。当然，接受这种合作对运营商来说是个不小的挑战，但我还是很想知道第一个吃螃蟹的人会获得什么好处，比如说吸引更多年轻用户和游戏玩家，也想知道他们何时开始提供这种免数据包资费版本的游戏，以及他们的后续运营计划。”

这种项目合作会是什么情况？德维利以西班牙及拉美网络运营商Telephonica公司为例来说明这一点，该公司最近发布了一个API，支持开发商通过用户对应用的数据包消费，获取一定比例的抽成。Rovio也可以在全世界范围内推行这种项目合作，促使开发商获得更多营收分成。

Vesterbacka表示那些不愿为运营商的“超值服务”买单的用户、开发商，可能会担心移动运营商会针对更优化的带宽分配服务征收高额费用，但《愤怒的小鸟》可利用其巨大的市场影响力，确保玩家免受这种限制。

新兴公司Screach联合创始人山姆·莫顿（Sam Morton）表示，他很期待《愤怒的小鸟》能够为开发商与运营商之间的关系带来积极影响，“如果有这样的团队为我们铺路，大家就很容易找到突破口，也不需要如此依赖苹果了。”

Bad Piggy Bank项目发展前景

尽管这一切听起来有点遥远，但Rovio确实是高瞻远瞩。Bad Piggy Bank果真能成为一个可挑战苹果霸主地位的交叉网络电子商务平台吗？来自API管理公司Mashery的奥伦·迈克尔斯（Oren Michels）的观点是，运营商可能不会为了与苹果抗衡，而选择与Rovio在电子商务网络上进行合作，因为一般运营商都希望独立发展，并不喜欢联合作战。

不过Alcatel-Lucent公司开放式API平台的高级副总裁Laura Merling却持有不同看法，“Rovio有可能改变移动运营商的营收模式，并同时满足开发商的需求，为玩家提供更好的用户体验。”

Rovio这一发展计划的最终结果如何当然还是个未知数，但确实很值得期待。移动网络行业分析师Chetan Sharma对其看法如下：

《愤怒的小鸟》的最大筹码就是它的用户规模，一般公司很难建立这种优势。如果Rovio团队打好这张牌，他们就有可能获得堪比Facebook在社交网络领域的成就。Facebook最关心用户规模，一旦你具备了这种条件，那就说明每天都有数百万用户在使用你的产品，你就可以打造一个老少通吃的大众项目。所以Rovio推出免数据包资费版本的游戏，是与Facebook同类服务一样正确的选择。这对运营商、用户和Rovio来说，是一个多赢的局面。

“创建一个成功的计费系统有点困难，因为它会直接影响运营商的计费服务营收。Rovio应该继续将《愤怒的小鸟》“打造成一项服务”，或者将其作为一个平台来运营，这样他们就会获得更多发展出路。Rovio在移动领域拥有极高的威望，他们的用户规模还在不断扩大，用户黏性也非常理想，发展前景很光明。”

由此看来，《愤怒的小鸟》项目的前途甚为明朗，如果Rovio真发布了这个新版本的游戏，这或许将成为推动移动网络向前发展的重要一环。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

The Future of Angry Birds & What it Means

Rovio, the company behind the wildly popular app Angry Birds, has plans to launch a live, multi-player and multi-media version of its mobile game. That new, richer version of the game could be offered at no cost to the data plans of users, through carrier partnerships. If successful, this plan for what to do with the huge Angry Birds market footprint (now with more than 100 million downloads), could cause substantial technical and economic disruptions across the mobile world. Rovio hopes it will, as do a number of other industry players.

We put clues together at South by Southwest this week, based on conversations with several Rovio team members and other industry leaders, and sketched out what I believe is the company’s plan.

Rovio team members have now confirmed that the following theory is accurate.
Announcements Stacked Up HighRovio was at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas this week to make a number of announcements. First, the company told the world that it has raised more than $42 million in venture funding, including from early Facebook backers Accel Partners. Then the company announced that it just passed 100 million downloads of Angry Birds, a number it estimates means that one-third of all smart phone owners have Angry Birds on their devices.

The company also talked about its new Mighty Eagle software development kit (SDK), which will allow third party games to integrate the level-busting Mighty Eagle character Angry Birds sells into their games, in exchange for cross promotion by Rovio.

Angry Birds, With Live Video

Peter Vesterbacka, whose title at Rovio is simply “Mighty Eagle,” told me the company is also working on an arrangement with mobile carriers to offer a data-free version of Angry Birds. I thought that was interesting but didn’t think much of it, until I told my wife about it and she said, “so what, how much data does it take to play Angry Birds?”

It was a great question, and one I sought to find an answer for by speaking to a number of other people at the event, some of whom I’ve shared thoughts from here. The best theory: that the company is developing a version of the game for which a data-free plan will be meaningful for players. Multi-player live challenges, with multi-media, something heavy duty that players would sit on all day and rock the mobile phone networks with.

What would be so disruptive about a live Angry Birds? It will be data-free Angry Birds, similar to Facebook’s Facebook Zero deal with mobile carriers around the world.

Facebook Zero is super light-weight, though. Is there really anything Angry Birds could add to its app that would make a meaningful impact on a data consumer’s costs? Vesterbacka said he has no doubt there is. He also points out that outside the United States, data caps are lower and sometimes data consumption is purely metered.

What kinds of features could be added that would bump up the data load of Angry Birds? Vesterbacka said he had no problem thinking of a lot. Theoretically, for example, the app could offer video

play-back sharing of great shots. It could include Facetime-like video chat inside the multi-player challenges. The 80 million views of video trailers and previews on the

Rovio YouTube channel

could be served up from the app itself, instead of from YouTube. Those were just three quick examples; Vesterbacka said he could think of more, all day long. He’s a refreshingly straight-forward person to talk to, and he’s not alone in that on the team.

What’s In It for the Phone Companies

Why will mobile carriers be willing to eat those bandwidth costs and offer an app like that for free? Rovio hopes they will do so in exchange for a cut of revenues from the carrier level e-commerce platform it has built called the Bad Piggy Bank. When the Bad Piggy Bank was announced earlier this year, we called it a big sign of things to come in terms of network level features including but not limited to e-commerce. Network level functionality like this could be a big new area of innovation in the future.

Rovio hopes that the Bad Piggy Bank will be deployed by app developers and carriers around the world who are concerned about the concentration of power in Apple’s iTunes. Rovio also hopes it will be able to use its big market share to push carriers towards making their networks more favorable for software developers.

Vesterbacka said he hopes to make Angry Birds the most carrier-friendly mass app on the market as well, by making design and development decisions informed by the efficiency interests of the network. Limiting the number of times a messaging connection is open and closed per user session, for example, is something the networks really appreciate – but it’s also a big battery saver for the user.

What’s In It For App Developers

Some app developers believe, though, that Rovio’s biggest impact will be in pushing the network providers towards conditions more favorable for app developers.

Rudy De Waele, co-founder of international mobile app showcase AppCircus, has this to say about Rovio.

“Those guys are going to challenge the whole ecosystem. They think big, they think ahead and they can pull off breakthroughs on multiple levels.

“Mobile operators are desperately trying to reach developers, they know they have to change, but at the big ones, their DNA isn’t ready to talk to individual developers. Peter [Vesterbacka] knows the carriers and that opens a lot of doors, because they’ve been doing things under the old model of apps and big carriers for years.

“This has never been seen before, you’re a mobile game and you go to Hollywood! It’s going to be a challenge for the carriers to get onboard, but I look forward to the advantage that the first ones capture, especially with young people and gamers, when they start offering these Angry Bird experiences for free and jump on board the rest of this plan.”

What might that look like? De Waele offered the example of Spanish and Latin American network carrier Telephonica. That company recently launched an API that gives app developers a cut of the revenue generated from the data their apps let customers consume. Rovio could do things like agitate for programs like that around the world or push for developers to get a better cut.

Vesterbacka raised the concern that mobile carriers would likely charge customers or developers a premium for the best bandwidth allocation, with those unwilling to pay more getting “best effort” service. Angry Birds could leverage its giant market share to make sure their users are exempt from such constraints, for example.

Sam Morton, co-founder of a startup called Screach, the winner of the App Circus mobile startup competition at South by Southwest, said he’s hopeful about the impact Angry Birds could have on the relationship between developers and carriers. “If these guys trailblaze for us, it really opens things up. Then Apple becomes less important.”
The Power and Pitfalls of Cross-Network PlatformsThat might be taking things a bit far, but Rovio certainly aims big. Can the Bad Piggy Bank become the cross-network e-commerce platform that the world outside Apple gets behind to challenge Apple’s dominance? Oren Michels of API management company Mashery says the carriers may not want to collaborate using Rovio e-commerce to counter-balance Apple’s e-commerce power because they are focused on differentiating themselves individually and often prefer not to work together.

Not everyone agrees. “Rovio is showing that it’s possible to simultaneously shift the revenue model for service providers, support the needs of developers and give consumers a better user experience,” says Laura Merling, senior VP of international network instrumentation service Alcatel-Lucent’s Open API Platform. (Disclosure: Both Mashery and Alcatel-Lucent are ReadWriteWeb sponsors.)

Scaling Up Like Facebook

The ultimate outcome of the company’s efforts are of course unknowable today, but it’s guaranteed to be interesting to watch. Leading mobile and network industry analyst Chetan Sharma offered usthis take on the viability of Rovio’s plans.

The biggest leverage Angry Birds have is scale. Scale is very hard to build. If they play their cards right, they could become what Facebook is to online social networking. Facebook focusemaniacally on building the scale first, because once you have scale – meaning millions of users using your products on a daily basis, you could build a business just selling chewing gum (you get my point). A data-charge free version is right in line with Facebook’s data-free social networking app & access. Good for carriers, good for consumers and good for Rovio.

“Building a successful billing system will be a bit difficult because it directly impacts operator billing revenue strategies. Rovio should continue to leverage and build ‘Angry Bird as a Service’ or Angry Birds as a Platform and they will have multiple opportunities open up for them. They have tremendous respect in the ecosystem and with ever-increasing reach and consumer addiction, their future looks bright.”

The future looks bright indeed for Angry Birds; bright, media-rich, real-time, free and disruptive on a platform level. That’s a very ambitious vision for a pile of pigs and birds. Such could be the foundation of the mobile Web’s future.（source:readwriteweb）