Angry Birds downloaded a staggering 6.5 million times on Christmas Day

Once upon a time on Christmas morning, the ritual was to open up your new system and start up packed in software like Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog or even Wii Sports. During the most recent holidays it seems like the equivalent happened to owners of new tablets and cell phones. On Christmas Day 2011 Rovio’s juggernaut of an app, Angry Birds, had six and a half million downloads in a single day.

When speaking with the site AllThingsD, Rovio’s Ville Heijari revealed the stunning number of downloads for the product, though it should be noted not all of it was paid for. The total is a mix of paid and free downloads of Angry Birds and the multiple holidays reskins Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio. Still, during 2010’s X-Mas the bird-flinger had only 2 million, so obviously this avian addiction shows no signs of stopping. Did you get a new device over the break and was Angry Birds your first download too? If so, why not give a title like Sworcery or Game Dev Story a try if you’re looking for a deeper app experience.

Henry Gilbert

Henry Gilbert is a former GamesRadar+ Editor, having spent seven years at the site helping to navigate our readers through the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation. Henry is now following another passion of his besides video games, working as the producer and podcast cohost of the popular Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon podcasts.