

Angry Birds raise $42M? - davidblerner
http://gigaom.com/2011/03/10/skype-founder-others-invest-42-million-in-angry-birds/

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latch
This doesn't seem too crazy to me. I see three things here: the Angry Birds
Games, the Angry Birds Brand, and Rovio.

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.

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pclark
You realise the Game Boy has been discontinued for many years?

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latch
Sorry, I mean whatever current portable gaming device nintendo is selling tens
and tens of millions of.

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Hovertruck
Just for the record, that's the Nintendo DS, which is also a touch screen
(albeit with a stylus) so the gameplay wouldn't really suffer.

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pclark
There are more iOS devices than Nintendo DS devices, for what its worth.

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ultrasaurus
But they're a demographic that bought them so that they could spend $20+
regularly on video games so you could expect penetration or prices to be
higher.

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annon
Honestly I'm baffled as to why they need to raise funding. The game is still
#2 & #5 on the app store, so they've got to have pretty significant revenue
coming in.

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.

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mahmud
By that logic, Microsoft should raise 50B from investors to bring their wildly
successful MS Paint application to more platforms.

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FiReaNG3L
42M for the equivalent of a flash game? There's no bubble here, move along.

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dreamux
The comparison isn't really fair, since they sell the game and make money - a
different model than flash games (advertising, free distribution).

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.

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decklin
Only on iOS. The Android version is ad-supported.

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Hovertruck
There's an OS X version in the app store as well that costs $4.99.

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treblig
Sounds like founders taking cash off the table to me.

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gyardley
Wouldn't surprise me. Large round, company being courted by many investors,
already bringing in a ton of money - all the conditions are right.

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prs
Not to say that this valuation indicates a bubble but I find it interesting to
compare it to the Moorhuhn Game Series which was popular quite a few years
ago. Seems to have been the equivalent of Angry Birds in the early 2000's.

 _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._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorhuhn>

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cletus
Wow, $42 million is a whopping huge Series A.

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.

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pclark
I think you should look at this financing more as creating the next Zynga,
than the next "old school game studio". I bet they proved they can up sell
"different but the same" games thanks to the Halloween specials of Angry
Birds, and so on.

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e03179
They've already spunoff with Angry Birds Seasons. Given the success of that
app, I think they can build more Angry Birds Topical apps like:

Angry Birds Transformers. Angry Birds Harry Potter. Angry Birds Cars. Angry
Birds Kungfu Panda. Angry Birds Democrats!

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towelrod
But they would have to pay for all of those. Its more likely to see something
like "Angry Birds Forth of July!", right?

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alanfalcon
That's Angry Birds Seasons. New level sets for each holiday all in the same
app.

