![]() That means that there is no interest.” The game is already pre-installed on Lenovo tablets and many kinds of Nokia devices there. “You should be very, very concerned if you don’t have copies in China. “We’re not there yet, but we’re the most copied brand and most loved brand in China,” he says. While it’s often difficult to build a profitable mobile app business in China because of piracy, jailbroken phones and fragmentation, Vesterbacka is optimistic. Rovio is also ramping up in China, where the company has just four employees. (I hear the effective cost per thousand impressions for a casual mobile game generally runs from $0.20 to $0.50, so a back of the envelope calculation suggests $2 to $5 million a month in pure ad revenue.) Plus, the company is still an advertising juggernaut with more than 10 billion impressions per month, a number that’s sure to rise with the launch of Angry Birds Space. “It’s like a bigger launch than a movie.” “This is the first time ever that you have a mobile-originated game launching with a full line-up of merchandise at Walmart,” Vesterbacka says. Hidden on the price tags and packaging are clues that unlock extra levels in the game. The Angry Birds Space launch is also coupled with all kinds of merchandise including a National Geographic book about space and a special edition of News Corp.’s iPad magazine The Daily that explains the development of the game. There’s also a load of Angry Birds Space-themed apparel, plush toys, phones and fruit snacks that are coming to Walmart soon. Last year the company sold 25 million plush toys, ranging from $5 to $99 and it earns a single-digit percentage revenue share from those sales. He’s very smart and he knows what he’s doing.”Īs for this year, it’s all about stepping up Rovio’s reach into other mediums and its capacity to produce more games. “We’re 100 percent sure he’ll do the right thing,” Vesterbacka said of Kaj Hed. ![]() In 2005, the current CEO Mikael Hed left out of a disagreement with his father about how to grow the company and didn’t return until four years later when he was able to lay the groundwork for Angry Birds’ launch in December 2009. The $42 million round the company raised last year was even dubbed the “father liquidity” round by one insider, as the proceeds largely went to cash Kaj Hed out, according to several sources with knowledge of the terms. That father-son dynamic has caused tension from time to time over the years. ![]() Kaj Hed, who is the father of Rovio chief executive Mikael Hed, owns close to 70 percent of the company, giving him the power to block outcomes like a sale. Rovio also has a very unique ownership structure as a family-owned business, given the company’s long history of making 52 failed games before producing Angry Birds and its Scandinavian roots. Would this finally include a game from the pig’s perspective? “Maybe. He adds, “Last year was about building the infrastructure, and this year we’ll be doing five new games.” “We want to make Angry Birds a permanent part of pop culture,” Vesterbacka says. The company plans four more totally new games this year, not counting the usual seasonal releases and the versions of Angry Birds that show up on other platforms like Facebook and Chrome Web Store. A film and animated shorts are in the works too. Over time, the company is actually becoming less reliant on pure gaming revenue as it pulls in cash from licensing, merchandising and books. Rovio is probably the most unorthodox mobile gaming company in the industry given its history, revenue mix and ownership. “We’re naive enough not to know what we can’t do.” “It helps to be a bit crazy,” says the company’s chief marketing officer and Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka. Inventiveness and spontaneity have made Rovio the company it is today. Hardly anyone working there has a deep marketing background and yet Rovio is pulling off stunts on the Space Needle - for free (thanks to T-Mobile). NASA scientists even helped out in designing the physics-engine for the new game. The Finnish mobile gaming juggernaut attached a giant Angry Birds slingshot to the Seattle Space Needle yesterday and had an astronaut demo the game from the International Space Station two weeks ago. We might be able to help you launch birds if you find pigs in space.Ī year later, it’s really happening. Hey RovioMobile, our computers are a bit better than they were in ’69. ![]() Asserting that smartphones today have more computing power than the machines that powered the lunar landing in 1969, NASA said it would help Rovio launch birds if pigs could fly in space. The idea for Angry Birds Space actually originated in a challenge NASA made to Rovio nearly a year ago on Twitter. Angry Birds Space, Rovio Mobile’s first genuinely new game in a year, has some humble origins. ![]()
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