How to keep Angry Birds downloads flowing? Add KISS

Rovio Mobile has done a pretty impressive job of leveraging the runaway success of the game Angry Birds into a huge multimedia brand. But like Beanie Babies, Furbies and Tamagatchis before it, one figures that eventually, Angry Birds will lose steam and disappear into the annals of toy history.

Of course, Rovio doesn’t want that to happen, and it’s working to keep the heavily downloaded bird-slinging arcade game as relevant as possible for as long as possible. And that means new partnerships with popular…musical groups, apparently.

As PocketGamer reports, one such potential partnership for Angry Birds is between Rovio and the heavily made-up glam rockers KISS. The band’s frontman, Gene Simmons, told IndustryGamers in an interview that KISS is in talks with Rovio Mobile about a potential spin-off Angry Birds game. Everything is pretty preliminary at this point, but Simmons and KISS seemed excited about the possibilities in the interview.

“We’re talking with Angry Birds, KISS and Angry Birds, which will become a deal,” Simmons said.

KISS is no stranger to marketing. The band recently created a tie-in product with the Hello Kitty brand to create KISS Hello Kitty, which Simmons said has reached 90 countries already. It’s not clear what the KISS/Angry Birds product might be, whether it’ll be a game or just merchandise, but it seems Simmons is confident that something will occur.

Rovio isn’t a stranger to finding new ways to make Angry Birds exciting, either. Last year, the developer saw a lot of success with Angry Birds Seasons, which received periodic holiday-driven updates of levels and art work. It also released Angry Birds Rio, a spin-off Angry Birds title that combined marketing with the 20th Century Fox animated film, Rio. That game also saw quite a bit of success, partially because Rovio rolled out groups of levels slowly, and partially because, like all Angry Birds games, it was well designed and a lot of fun to play.

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