The recent release of a new Angry Birds mobile game is part of an effort to bring back a classic series in some very modern ways.

Driving the news: Rovio, the company behind 2009 sensation Angry Birds (yes, it was that long ago), just released its newest slingshot game, Angry Birds Journey, last week.

• It released a new cartoon, Angry Birds Summer Madness, on Netflix today.
• The company also recently launched an official Angry Birds space in Roblox which has been visited more than 300,000 times, even as Rovio acknowledges it's still figuring out what to do with it.

The big picture: These efforts are an attempt by Rovio to revive a brand that hasn’t had a hit Angry Birds release since AB2 in 2015 and has seen gaming revenue plateau and license revenues fall in recent years.

• Rovio’s senior vice president of Angry Birds strategy, Ben Mattes, tells Axios that one problem has been missing a section of gamers.
• “We have this gulf where maybe the teens aren't playing Angry Birds as much as we might like,” he says.
• He noted that kids get into the series from the cartoons, but that much of the player base, loyal since the early years, is older. Teens, seeking something cool, wind up playing League of Legends or Clash of Clans instead.

Between the lines: Rovio, therefore, wants to experiment, and Mattes drops hints of what sounds like a potential Angry Birds MOBA (the genre of League of Legends) or a riff on other popular games.

• “The experience of physics and destruction and slingshots, there's no reason why that can't lend itself to a competitive team-based multiplayer synchronous or asynchronous co-op battler,” he says.
• For Rovio, the goal ultimately is for Angry Birds to succeed in a new way. “It's not what we need to make better free-to-play slingshot games because frankly, we're kind of doing that pretty well,” Mattes says.
• Instead, Rovio plans to experiment and make new types of Angry Birds games (and maybe some more non AB games, too.)

Classic comeback: The company also plans to revive the original 2009 game, which it removed from mobile storefronts a few years ago due to tech incompatibility issues.

• Rovio is specifically reconstructing the game as it was in 2012, after several content updates, to satisfy longtime fans’ requests.

The bottom line: Plenty of classic gaming franchises, such as Pac-Man or Space Invaders, stick around as monetizable nostalgia acts.

• Rovio’s challenge is to see if Angry Birds in 2022 can be more than that.

Next week is stuffed with big video game companies’ quarterly earnings. Expect plenty of news around that in addition to the start of a February stuffed with major releases.

Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 29 & 30

• Not much, though check Juked’s handy esports calendar for some tournament listings.

Monday, Jan. 31

• Koei-Tecmo quarterly earnings announced.

Tuesday, Feb. 1

• EA quarterly earnings announced.
• Shovel Knight studio Yacht Club Games hosts an online showcase. They’re promising a “megaton announcement.”
• Life is Strange: Remastered (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Stadia) is released.

Wednesday, Feb. 2

• Sony and Meta quarterly earnings announced.
• The Waylanders (PC), a throwback indie role-playing game, is released.

Thursday, Feb. 3

• Activision, Konami, Nintendo and Unity quarterly earnings announced.

Friday, Feb. 4

• Dying Light 2 (PlayStation, Xbox, PC) is released.

A follow-up from yesterday: The general manager of Ubisoft’s Singapore studio was demoted, given a “final written warning,” and removed from the studio due to a company investigation in 2020, according to a Singapore government watchdog.

• The Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices shared a summary of its investigation into the Ubisoft studio with Axios. The group said it found no racial pay disparity and that the company had handled workplace harassment reports “appropriately.”
• That summary matched Ubisoft’s own account that we reported yesterday, though it also included disciplinary details about the GM, who had been accused of sexual harassment in prior press reports. His removal was previously reported, and he now works out of Ubisoft’s Paris HQ.

💰 Spending on PC gaming hardware and accessories in the U.S. last year was up 25% to $5.74 billion, according to the NPD group. That’s the second big growth year for the category, with NPD predicting a 4% decline for 2022.

🤔 A developer for Mortal Kombat studio Netherrealm tweeted–then deleted an image that included a reference to the as-yet-unannounced Mortal Kombat 12. The image also included references to players scrutinizing images for clues about new projects

😲 The recent renaming of VR headset Oculus Quest to Meta Quest has gone over poorly on social media, where a Meta social media manager has been playing defense: “We understand that the Oculus name means a lot to all of us…”

"The surprisingly messy culture wars within The New York Times Crossword Puzzle" [Hallie Lieberman, Kotaku]

“IDI” has been an answer 120 times since [Will] Shortz began editing the puzzle, most recently on July 5 of this year. Former Times editor Farrar “did not allow Idi Amin in a puzzle because he was such a despicable person,” Shortz said. “Nowadays, no one loves to have Idi Amin in a puzzle, but sometimes he makes the interlock work, so it’s all right.”

“[Critic Michael] Sharp also notes that few words are three letters beginning and ending with “I,” but he thinks there’s another reason for Amin’s popularity. “It’s a European bias…It’s people who don’t have the experience…of dictators in Africa. They could just look at their names and think of them as just words.”

I’m trying today’s big new Switch game, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, but I don’t know which starter Pokémon pal to choose.

• How about you pick for me?
• My options are: the fire-type anteater-looking Cyndaquil, the owlish grass/flying Rowlet or the water-type Oshawott.
• Our resident Pokémon expert, Megan, is off today, so I’m turning to all of you. Reply to this newsletter with your selection, and I’ll go with whoever gets the most votes in the next 24 hours.

Picking a starter Pokémon is a tradition in this 26-year-old series, one that Arceus has kept.

• Reviewers have praised the game for shaking up many of the franchise’s other traditions, but criticized its low-fidelity visuals.
• The negatives aren’t expected to hold it back, and the game is likely to be one of 2022’s biggest hits.