Rovio’s Angry Birds cost only a little over $100,000 to make (which is peanuts compared to AAA games these days) and has made $70 million and counting. Rovio’s co-founders said they want the Finnish company to become “Disney 2.0”, with cross-media efforts in TV, merchandise and comics.
“Look at how Disney got started,” said chief executive Mikael Hed. “Steamboat Willie created Mickey Mouse, then they added more characters. You can see the same pattern today, but everything is happening much, much faster. Other brands used to build recognition over the course of decades. We’ve done it in one year.”
Rovio has around 40 employees and generates nearly a $1 million month from the ad supported Android version of Angry Birds. Roughly 40 percent of the company’s revenues are from non-game businesses, like as merchandising and licensing, with that only likely to increase with the upcoming release of Angry Birds Rio.
“We are building our infrastructure with Angry Birds. So we have the distribution, the marketing, everything in place, so that we can basically take any IP and drop it in, said Hed. And we have the capability of producing the games on all the platforms – smartphones, consoles, PCs, Mac, online, Facebook – you name it. Then the TV, the movie side, it will happen when the time is right.”
Source: Wired
