Rovio ventures into augmented reality with new ‘Angry Birds Isle of Pigs’ game

Finnish game company Rovio has released an augmented reality game called Angry Birds Isle of Pigs, developed with Swedish game studio Resolution Games for Apple's mobile devices, the Finnish games developer said on Tuesday.

The release, announced at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, came in addition to the two games the company had promised to release this year, one of which is already out.

Rovio, mostly known for its Angry Birds products, said the game's augmented reality element allowed players to overlay its three-dimension environment onto their own surroundings such as a table, by viewing it through an iPhone or iPad.

The game "allows players to take the power of the Angry Birds slingshot into their hands like never before, placing the classic piggy constructed towers into the player's own environment using Apple's ARKit technology," Rovio said in a statement.

Rovio had previously launched another augmented reality game with Resolution Games, intended for a gaming headset developed by Magic Leap.

Apple has also been developing its own lenses for augmented reality glasses.

The new game is Rovio's first attempt at bringing an augmented reality product to mobile phones and pads. It is first available for pre-order on Apple's App Store for iPhone 6s and later on for iPads, the company said.

In February, Rovio said it expected sales to grow this year, buoyed by new game launches and a movie release, after its fourth-quarter adjusted operating profit halved.