Video Games, Cell Phone App | featured news

Tuomas Erikoinen, the man who drew the hit "Angry Birds" app, doesn't really resent his creation. He's just bored with it. He sees the game's grumpy, ball-shaped, wingless birds everywhere he goes, their furrowed brows staring him down. Here in Finland's capital, where "Angry Birds" began, Erikoinen's drawings have been turned into T-shirts, "plushie" stuffed animals and two brands of soft drinks -- Tropic and Paradise.

The Finns behind Angry Birds seek global domination... “We think we can hit a billion downloads by the end of next year,” Vesterbacka says, casually. Then, almost as an aside: “We think we can be the leading entertainment brand in China by 2012.” Excusez-moi? “We think we can be bigger than Disney in China,” he clarifies. As growth projections go, this sounds absurd. Rovio grossed $20 million (the company is profitable) in the first three months of 2011. Disney will spend that amount every ten days for the next five years building its 1,000-acre theme park in Shanghai.

We all know Angry Birds has been downloaded loads of times. My personal estimate was somewhere around a million-kabillion, but developer Rovio's latest figures put me off by just a few.

The hit game is one of the unlikeliest pop-culture crazes of the year — and perhaps the first to make the leap from cellphone screens to the mainstream.

id's classic shooter has finally been (officially) ported to the iPhone. And thanks to oversight from John Carmack himself, there are a number of improvements that make it worth a purchase even for Jailbreakers.