Angry Birds Space, the latest mobile game from Finnish developer Rovio, has reached the 50m downloads mark just 35 days after its release on 22 March.
The publisher claims on its blog that this makes its tile "the fastest growing mobile game yet", beating all previous records for the Angry Birds series.
The announcement may be a deliberate reminder to challengers like Draw Something of the scale of Angry Birds. Draw Something was released on 1 February, notched up 35m downloads in its first seven weeks – yes, a similar time period to that required for Rovio's new milestone – and was promptly acquired by Zynga for $180m.
Draw Something passed 50m downloads in early April, while another recently-released game, Temple Run, is also past that milestone.
"While numbers like this certainly say something about the popularity of Angry Birds, for us the main goal is to keep creating fun new experiences that everybody can enjoy," explains Rovio on its blog.
The company released updates to the iOS and Android versions of Angry Birds Space on 25 April with 10 new levels for free, as well as 20 free Space Eagles power-ups. Both may be responses to criticism from some quarters about Rovio's greater use of in-app purchases in the new game.
"There's only one conclusion to draw: something even bigger is on its way," concludes the blog post. That something is likely to be a 1bn milestone for the entire Angry Birds series.
The public figure for overall downloads has remained at 700m for some time now, as the developer stopped providing updates in anticipation of cracking the 1bn mark. That can't be far off now.
As a comparison, the original Angry Birds was released on 9 December 2009, and reached the 50m milestone exactly one year later.
