Angry Birds Gets a Mixed Reality Makeover
The game is slated for a release date of Oct 20 and is developed for Magic Leap One headsets.
Angry Birds was a game that took the mobile gaming industry by storm. Once, everyone was talking about how fun that game was and adults were not behind when it came to the overall user base. Now the Finnish developer is giving the game an AR makeover! Rovio has developed an AR version of angry birds named Angry Birds FPS, and it is coming to the Magic Leap One, the flagship device from the company Magic Leap, who pioneer in building Mixed Reality headsets.
The game is titled Angry Birds FPS or Angry Birds: First person slingshot. A fitting title considering the fact the users get to play the game for the slight shot point of view. When playing the game on the headset, the headset places the piggies, their standoff and other wreckables on the group or on a table based on what you have in front of you. Yes, the game augments graphics and textures onto what you see in front of you. The game even allows the players to walk around the virtual object to note weak points in the structure.
With this move, Magic Leap’s first ever high profile game will be the Angry Birds FPS, a great start. Magic Leap is still in its nurturing stage and has entered the market recently after the launch of their new hardware.
The users can control the slingshot using the controllers that come with the headset. The game will go live on October 20th and can only be used with the Magic Lead headset. Some are a little apprehensive about the adoption of the AR headset as it comes with an MRP of $2,295. Magic Leap hopes to get developers and creators onboard so that they will start making more content for mixed reality platforms.
Rovio has been toying with the idea of getting Angry Birds an AR makeover. The chief marketing officer of Rovio, Ville Heijari, stated that the company had their first try with mixed reality when they released some mini-games during the time when the Angry Birds movie came out. So for a company who is constantly updating themselves, targeting the mixed reality platform is the next big step for the company.
“We were really interested in this particular tech,” he said. “We see [Microsoft’s] HoloLens as an enterprise unit. With VR, we are talking about something different. It’s exactly this thing [Magic Leap], where there is a very casual gaming setup, and you are still present in your living space, but you can look at this experience mixed in your surroundings. For us, this is is investing for the long-term. If we’re not doing this now, then we’re going to be late.”
The success of mixed reality platforms depends on the success of hardware as well as the software. Therefore, they keep a symbiotic relationship to push each other mainstream. Games like Angry Birds and hardware like the Magic Leap One will certainly help users to get a taste of VR and AR, helping them understand the potential of these new platforms.
