Angry Birds licensing generated 30% of Rovio's revenues in 2011

So out of that 75,4 Meur 53 Meur came from actual games. So with 650 000 000 downloads single download got them 8 cents. So one could speculate that roughly 1 out of 7 games or so was paid version, the other being free ad funded games. Maybe even as few as 1/15.

I'd say that Angry Birds games are just the base and real money will already this year come from merchandising/licensing. Not that their earnings isn't very impressive, it just seems off compared to game downloads.

Posted:A year ago

Rovio's not a game company. They're what you might call a "character company," like Hello Kitty. So it's actually rather worrisome that so much of their revenue comes from games, but if that's trending downwards (or more precisely, if revenue from other sources is growing faster than that from games), that's a good thing, from a business point of view.

Posted:A year ago

Exactly Curt. Still, 8 cents per game sold is extremely low, game company or not.

Posted:A year ago

I think it's a matter of how you look at it.
They have a fantastic game that is winning the world over.

And they've chosen to go with a model where the games are all available for free.

You can pay for more content or to remove the ads, and I'm sure many people do.
But the vast majority of people are playing for free.

And Rovio are bring in - on average - a small amount of money from them all, and as a result, they are making over $100m a year.

Rovio could experiment with different models, such as a paid-version-only game, but it seems their game is massively successful partly because of the model they've chosen.

Remember that perhaps 1/3 or 1/2 of their players may not have ANY money to spend on games. They might be 6 years old, or 8 years old. Angry Birds, in all it's flavours, are still accessible to all of those kids, and to everyone too tight to pay $1 for a game. And that's a large part of why Angry Birds is so prevalent.

And it's those kids, who spent $0 on Rovio games (even though they might have 3 different Angry Birds games installed), it's THOSE kids who are nagging their parents to buy them an Angry Bird toy at the supermarket, or playing an Angry Birds skill tester at the cinema, or buying Angry Birds crayons at the toy shop.

Rovio might get $3, $5, or even $10 or $20 from these fans. Perhaps 8 cents from advertisement views, and many dollars from their other merchandising.

:) It's interesting times, and I think they've been really smart with their strategies to monetize their brand.

But for me, I'd like to play a new Darkest Fear game fro Rovio! :)
I consider them to be one of the greatest Java phone game developers back around 2009.
Darkest Fear 1 and 2, Star Marine... excellent games!

Posted:A year ago