Three, Two One, The Countdown to Angry Birds Space Begins - Landing on the App Store March 22

Bird flingers have a month to get their space-gear ready because Rovio just announced the next Angry Birds game is blasting off on March 22 for the final frontier. Rovio has been teasing press and fans alike with a vague note on their blog saying the 4^th game in the franchise, Angry Birds Space, is “a completely new game with innovative new gameplay, but with some of the familiar Angry Birds elements that fans already know and love -- plus some surprises! “

The blogsphere is awash with best guesses, including that aliens, not pigs will be the enemy and that gravity will (or won’t) play into the physics. The only non-speculative information comes from VentureBeat. They report that the new game based on uber-hit Angry Birds - which passed 700 million downloads recently and launched last week on Facebook - “will have numerous new characters and players can expect the science part of the game to be physically accurate ... On top of launching birds at pigs in zero gravity, the game will have a variety of other gameplay elements, including slow-motion, lightspeed destruction.”

Rovio put out a teaser with a menacing space-faring cardinal and promises more information in early March. It’s a safe bet that this will be even bigger that the Angry Birds Rio movie tie-in from last year, or anything we’ve seen from the Finnish game company so far. We’ll keep you posted as details land here on Earth.