Angry Birds raise $42M?(gigaom.com) |
Angry Birds raise $42M?(gigaom.com) |
I can't help but think that the brand itself has huge potential. Put this in the hands of Disney say, with movies, merchandise and licensing (McD Angry Birds Happy Meals) and the brand is probably worth at least a couple hundred millions. Not saying it's a given, they need to execute properly. Anyone remember Club Penguin (it's still around)...this seems way bigger than that.
This game is also well suited for the ultimate platform: game boy. That could be worth a little goldmine itself.
As for the developer, I have no clue, but I wouldn't bet against their next project.
This feels like expanding just for the sake of expanding. They should focus on what they're good at, which is making games. It doesn't take a large company to develop games like angry birds.
The problem with launching these apps is the amount of noise you need to break through in the app store to differentiate a product. People will probably start following brands instead of titles when searching for new content. This is already the case with other platforms, such as Zynga (Facebook), and EA (desktop, consoles). In that sense, the brand could become entrenched and very valuable.
There is no brand leader in mobile applications, yet.
I'm not sure why people think there is any particularly high amount of noise to break through in the app store. If you write a book and get your local bookstore to carry it, there is almost no chance you are going to sell a lot of copies just by putting it on the shelf. The same would apply to records or PC software if people actually bought either of those.
If you don't have people coming to the app store specifically to buy your app, you aren't going to sell very many copies. That isn't a grim reality of the app store, it's a grim reality of selling anything anywhere.
In addition to working on everything from plush toys to movies around Angry Bird brand, Rovio is also already executing their platform strategy with in-app operator payments and the Might Eagle cross-app virtual good.
Propelled by the game's popularity, its Bochum-based publisher Phenomedia AG, who had acquired Art Department, went public in late 1999 at the height of the dot-com bubble and attained a market value of up to one billion Euro.
I'm actually surprised that Rovio is going this route. From what I read, it seems that game financing goes along a different route normally (taking the form more similar to a bond IIRC; anyone knowledgeable care to enlighten?).
Repeat success is any field like this is hard. There are only a handful of studios who have had sustained repeated success and that typically revolves around a successful franchise. For example:
- id Software (Quake/Doom);
- Epic Games (Unreal)
- Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto);
- Infinity Ward (Call of Duty).
One (admittedly huge) hit does not a franchise make, or at least not a proven franchise. It'll be interesting to see what Rovio does with this money, whether they try and (further) leverage the Angry Birds franchise and really what the future of mobile gaming is.
If you estimate that a Series A round will take a 25-40% stake in a company that puts a ballpark post-money valuation of $100-160 million, which is impressive.
Angry Birds Transformers. Angry Birds Harry Potter. Angry Birds Cars. Angry Birds Kungfu Panda. Angry Birds Democrats!
Even if all things were equal, Nintendo portable is still a huge market. While the lines are blurring, I still think DS is a game device, and iOS isn't - specifically with respect to how much people pay/expect from games. The development costs for DS would be higher - as you'd have to build a longer game, but the so too would the margins.
If you meant that Nintendo should be afraid of the massive success of iOS, then yeah, I kind of agree. Still, making a sequel to a monumentally successful mobile game on the most successful gaming console at the moment (or its 3D successor, due to launch soon) would hardly be a bad idea. Yeah, lots of "non-gamers" love Angry Birds, but that's the same market that Nintendo had been going after with the DS in the first place (remember Brain Training?).
I chose to interpret their GDC keynote as an attack from being backed in to a corner. Someone else stole their schtick, and now they are panicking.