Angry Birds Rio downloads hit 10 million

Demand for the Angry Birds franchise shows no sign of abating, with new film tie-in Angry Birds Rio seeing 10 million downloads in just 10 days, according to comments made to website Mobile Entertainment.

The game was released on March 22 and as usual the majority of the downloads are for the free Lite version of the game. The paid-for version is available as a 59p iPhone edition and a £1.79 iPad HD version, but is free-to-play on the Android Marketplace.

The game is a tie-in to new Dreamworks CGI animated feature Rio, although the film does not feature the Angry Birds characters. The new game also earned prominence as a limited time exclusive for Amazon's new Android App Store.

The game has received positive reviews in the press, where it was praised for improving aspects of the gameplay and presentation - rather than simply being a rebranding for the purposes of the movie tie-in.

The standard version of Angry Birds recently passed the milestone of 100 million downloads, again including both free and paid-for versions. Publisher Rovio also claim to now have 40 million active users.

At the same time the company also revealed that 40 per cent of revenues from the game come from merchandising - not downloads.