Rovio has let loose 2 billion copies of Angry Birds games since the series’ launch in 2009 – that equals 28 percent of the world’s population, for comparison’s sake. Rovio CMO Peter Vesterbacka announced the number during London’s Pocket Gamer Connects:
“If you look at Rovio and what we’ve done over four years, there are now 2 billion copies of Angry Birds out there. I thought I was super-ambitious in 2010 when I said we’ll make $100 million and everyone else thought I was crazy, but it’s very important people thought I was insane for saying $100 million back then.”
Two hundred million people play Angry Birds each month, “the size of the Twitter audience,” Vesterbacka said. Rovio reported 1.7 billion downloads in April 2013, and revenue of $195.6 million for the year. Vesterbacka noted that Rovio created 51 games before making Angry Birds, and now nine out of 10 people in both the US and China know the brand. An Angry Birds movie is due out in July 2016, produced and funded by Rovio alone.
“We’re not building Angry Birds for a hundred days but for a hundred years,” he said. “Mario is a great role model for anyone in games, it’s been built for almost 30 years now. Hello Kitty is 40 this year and Mickey Mouse was launched in 1928 as a black-and-white cartoon, and that company is now building theme parks based on the character on every continent. We launched an iPhone game in 2009 and now 45 percent of our business comes from physical products, including drinks.”
As for the competition: “Candy Crush’s half a billion installs is a good start,” Vesterbacka said.
