★ Angry Birds Does Not Validate Your Platform

Angry Birds is a very popular game. It seems like almost everyone plays it. I don’t but I’m also not a gamer or someone who feels like it’s worth playing a game on the iPad or iPhone. However, Angry Birds has become a way to justify your platform.

When Android got Angry Birds, the world exploded. Then, you had to use the new Amazon Android App Store to get an exclusive free copy of Angry Birds Seasons and then we found out that you can “install” Angry Birds in the Chrome Web Store which really just adds a URL bookmark to your Chrome home screen. Now Angry Birds is available for Symbian and on the web and OMFG it’s on Windows Mobile! No one gives a crap cause my Blackberry has Angry Birds. Oh yeah? I have Angry Birds on my new Samsung phone and it’s built in! Yeah, well now Angry Birds is a part of the Intel App Up store for netbooks. You can also get it on your Palm WebOS tablet or smartphone!

Sigh.

Let’s take a step back. I’d like to simply state that if your platform doesn’t have Angry Birds, you fucked up. If you purchased a phone that doesn’t have Angry Birds built-in or as an available purchase, you made a very stupid purchase. If your platform does have Angry Birds and your phone does have it, that gives you no excuse to include it in your commercials, advertisements or in-store promotional materials. Angry Birds does not validate your platform. You exist so Angry Birds is just a part of the package.

Angry Birds has been developed for phones that sell well into the millions and it’s been released for phones that sell less than 10 thousand units. Angry Birds is everywhere. Deal with it.

The nonconformist in me hates that every platform has Angry Birds but the geek in me hates even more seeing the flying birds on every ad for every new cellphone or tablet. It’s on every platform! I get it!

I’m waiting for a platform like Intel’s AppUP or WebOS to fail so I can write a follow up to this post about Angry Birds couldn’t even save x. It’s true. Angry Birds won’t save your platform so please come back with some functionality that gives me a reason to switch.

The ultimate underlying issue with using Angry Birds to sell units is that, Angry Birds is everywhere so chances are that I already have it on my phone. Why should I switch to that phone? You just showed me 30 seconds of Angry Birds. I have Angry Birds. Thanks for showing me what my phone already does.