

$106million thanks to Angry Birds - TheNonGeeky
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/07/rovios-big-year-angry-birds-helps-gaming-company-soar-to-106m-in-sales648m-downloads/

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majani
I think they still need just one other successful game to prove to investors
they can repeat the trick if people were to get bored of Angry Birds.

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borlak
I have an idea for them.. a game where monsters are trying to invade your
fortress, and you have to build structures that attack them while on their
path, and you can upgrade them!

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lorewarden
This had already been done, see 'Misunderstood Pigs' in the App Store
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/misunderstood-
pigs/id43145100...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/misunderstood-
pigs/id431451004?mt=8)

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Chrono
Impressive revenue and great profit margin! Hopefully they will be able to
keep this up for 2012. It is worth noting the jump in employees (28 to 224) -
I kinda wonder if they will be able to manage them all, with such a sharp
increase.

Comparing to Mojang (Minecraft) Rivio have done very well, both having a huge
jump in revenue from one year to the next:

$78.8m in Revenue for Mojang and $9.5m in profit before taxes. Quite the
magnitude of difference in terms of profit rate, 12.07% for Mojang vs 64%
Rovio.

Licensing seems to be profitable?

Source for Mojang financials: <http://www.allabolag.se/5568192388/Mojang_AB>

(Don't you just love that annual reports for all companies are public
information in Sweden?)

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Luc
To me, Mojang's margins just don't pass the sniff test. It seems they should
be much higher. I assume they have done whatever accounting tricks possible to
reduce their profit (I'm not suggesting anything untoward, mind).

~~~
Chrono
I agree, the margins are just too low. They are expanding and such things cost
money but they are still only something like 13-15 employees at the moment but
still have bad margins.

I would expect at least double the margin for a company with low distribution
costs and reasonably low development costs - compared to other studios anyway.

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VinzO
Has anyone any idea what made this game so successfull? I consider myself a
hardcore gamer and I am interested in game development. I grew up with video
games starting with game and watch, C64 and NES. I have been hooked by so many
games over the years playing hours everyday. I tried angry birds for 10 mins
and got so bored I never played it again. I just don't see any fun in it.
Anyone like me? Any idea why people love this game?

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spitfire
The same thing that made scorched earth so popular. Simple, addictive
gameplay.

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VinzO
The thing is I don't see what can be addictive in this game. I am easily
addicted to games, but nothing with this one. It is so simple that it I find
it very boring. I try to understand the mechanics that make people addict to
this.

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spitfire
That's understandable. Not everyone will be addicted. I get bored with
fighting games, but scorch/worms and such absolutely enthral me.

Count yourself lucky I guess.

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freshfey
That's a great accomplishment and I'm very interested in how they are going to
top that. There's probably still a lot more room to grow on the franchising
and licensing part, but to build a sustainable company you have to constantly
build great products (which I'm sure they can).

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TheNonGeeky
Indeed, and they've proved it further with the Space version.

