Remedy co-founder Petri Järvilehto, whose credits include Alan Wake and the Max Payne games, has joined Rovio Mobile to help bring Angry Birds to consoles.
Rovio Mobile is a Finnish game studio best known for creating Angry Birds, the smash hit game for the iPhone and Android mobile devices which has sold more than 12 million copies on Apple’s App Store alone. Petri Järvilehto is a Finnish game developer best known for helping introduce the world to “bullet time” as the project lead, designer and programmer on the hyper-violent Max Payne games. Obviously, it’s a match made in Heaven.
So it is that Järvilehto has joined Rovio as the senior vice president for console development, with the responsibility of overseeing the development of console versions of Angry Birds. Direct ports of the game are already available for the PC and Mac, and as a PlayStation Mini for the PlayStation 3 and PSP, but the addition of Järvilehto suggests the studio has something bigger in mind for the future.
“We want to make Angry Birds a long lasting global gaming franchise, and we see the console platforms as a way of delivering an even more entertaining, powerful and involving experience,” Rovio CEO Mikael Hed said in a statement. “Petri has an outstanding track record and we’re thrilled to have him take the lead of our console development.”
“I think we’re only in the beginning, and with consoles we have the opportunity to create a new kind of gaming experience,” added Järvilehto.
Along with his position at Rovio, Järvilehto will remain on the board of directors at Remedy. Rovio’s new console edition of Angry Birds is expected to feature birds moving in slow-motion, angst-ridden pigs and hand-drawn, barnyard noir cutscenes, and will probably be out sometime in 2018.
Source: GamesIndustry
Published: Feb 8, 2011 01:25 am