Well that certainly didn’t take long! Hot on the heels of yesterday’s speculation that mobile giant Rovio was looking to purchase the rights to indie physics-puzzler Casey’s Contraptions, the transaction was confirmed by the big bird itself. Goodbye, slingshots and pigs, hello scissors and balloons!

1 billion is a might large number. So large, in fact, that I actually had to stop to think about how many zeros were in it. It’s nine. I think. Rovio doesn’t have to guess, though – because today they announced that the Angry Birds franchise has seen 1 billion downloads. That’s one download for every 7 people walking the Earth.

Shigeru Miyamoto isn’t just a legendary game designer; he’s also a humble, classy dude. Even though he’s the property of Nintendo, Miyamoto’s not afraid to talk about outside games that he loves and admires. During a recent interview that was conducted in Paris, he said that he holds affection for Angry Birds, one of the most popular games on iOS.

It's nice to know that some things in this fast-paced world of ours will never change. Specifically, wherever there's a hit video game, a cartoon adaptation is never far behind. ("Do the Mario!") Not only will we be seeing a Chop Chop Ninja cartoon before too long, but over the weekend, Rovio announced that an Angry Birds cartoon is in the works.

Rovio, where’s your Finnish pride?! As reported by Bloomberg, the new Angry Birds Space is available for download on the PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. But not on Windows Phone platform. Which is a blow to Nokia, who is betting the house that creating handsets with Windows Phone as its operating system will get them back in the smart phone game.

Apparently, Rovio and Nokia are headquartered in the same office park in Espoo, Finland, just a slingshot away (ha ha). So, it’s not like they don’t know each other.

While it probably won’t come as a big surprise to regular readers of the site, we here at Gamezebo have been big fans of Angry Birds since it late 2009 debut. But it’s certainly not the only game we enjoy around here. Another little gem that we never seemed to get enough of was Hemisphere Games’ Osmos. And Angry Birds Space? It plays like a brilliant melding of the two.

As part of the launch festivities surrounding Rovio’s upcoming Angry Birds Space, it has teamed up with MTV and their “A THIN LINE” campaign that fights cyber-bullying and discrimination to allow you to earn an extra level.

Building off the exciting news that the App Store now has over 25 billion served, Apple has unveiled the most popular app downloads of all time, region by region. Unsurprisingly, games are at the fore. Even less surprisingly, Rovio's Angry Birds ranks as the top paid iPhone app of all time in the United States. Fruit Ninja, Doodle Jump, and Cut the Rope occupy spots two, three, and four.

Rovio, the studio behind the enormously popular Angry Birds franchise, is flying higher than ever (and will in fact be taking Angry Birds beyond the stratosphere later this spring). But while it's true that a merchandizing blitz has helped the Angry Birds explode out of the confines of the mobile games market, the fact remains that it seems as if Rovio is (ahem) putting all its eggs into one basket.

You know how you and your friends are always kicking yourselves for not coming up with the idea for Angry Birds? Well kick a little harder, because Finnish newspaper Arvopaper is claiming that Rovio, the company that made the game, is worth over 6 billion dollars. How did they come to that number? Well that’s the thing… We don’t really know.