Rovio profits cut in half as Angry Birds sales drop

Justin Kahn

Posts: 752   +6

Rovio, creators of the popular Angry Birds phenomenon, have reported that the company's game sales were down slightly year-over-year. While it brings in a significant amount of revenue through other means with its Angry Birds and associated brands, because the company has had to take on so many more employees, due to the company's internal growth it made less then half as much money in 2013 as it did the year prior.

Rovio doesn't appear to be worried though, much of its money has gone back into the company to fund a new animation studio as well as its massive merchandising business. Plush Angry Birds and other branded consumer items make up almost 50% of the company's total sales.

It seems like Rovio will continue to rely on its dwindling gaming arm for the foreseeable near future, as its new animation studio's first major project isn't set to appear until sometime in 2016. While this could mean good news for gamers with a more complete focus on the gaming end of things, the company's game sales fell last year despite launching Angry Birds Star Wars 2 and other titles.

Reports suggest, Rovio's growth rate isn't really keeping pace with other major mobile publishers either. Some suggest Rovio's reliance on a very small number of IP allow companies like Candy Crush maker King (and even some smaller publisher/developers) to maintain a much steadier growth rate. The company also introduced freemium titles with in-app purchases which can tend to drive a certain segment of mobile gamers away.

Having said that, the Angry birds brand remains a strong one, with a very healthy merchandising business and having "exceeded 2 billion downloads so far, making it the most downloaded game brand ever," according to Rovio.

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Really? Because I, having recently moved to Android, would happily have bought the original Angry Birds game. Except I can't, because it's not available on Google Play, so I can only have the free ad-infested version. Had they not decided to force us into a third-party store (Amazon's) just to buy the original game, maybe their situation would be a little bit better.
Or do they think their *****ic spinoffs are better than the simple, straightforward original version?
 
I believe the saying goes, pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered?

Fact is, they have gotten to successful with this simple game to the point they are trying to milk it as far as they can which is causing issues like these.

The reign of Angry Birds is finally coming to an end.
 
I've been in this business and it can happen. Angry Birds has done what they can other games are out offer better game play. What they should have done is move to another type of game. But they kept on going with Angry Birds Star Wars that's where they lost me. I've moved on.
 
Say what you want about Angry Birds but it was the killer app of the smartphone era, the Tetris to a gameboy, there was a point that EVERY single smartphone I saw had angry birds on it, it's repetitive yes but rovio deserves respect for their hit
 
What do you expect? After the news came out that the NSA is using this game to access your mobile, how many people do you think will kepp that on their phones?
 
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