You could probably tell from the fact that just about everyone with a phone is playing it, but Angry Brids has raked in the big bucks for developer Rovio. After spending $140,000 developing and marketing the game, it’s brought in a whopping $70 million in revenue.
You can bet it won’t stop there though, as the company moves to make the franchise cross-media. Chief executive Mikael Hed told Wired to “Look at how Disney got started. Steamboat Willie created Mickey Mouse, then they added more characters. You can see the same pattern today, but everything is happening much, much faster. Other brands used to build recognition over the course of decades. We’ve done it in one year.”
With talks of an animated series, a tie-in to this Summer’s animated movie, Rio, it’s hard to deny that the franchise is going places fast.
“We are building our infrastructure with Angry Birds.” Hed added. “So we have the distribution, the marketing, everything in place, so that we can basically take any IP and drop it in. And we have the capability of producing the games on all the platforms – smartphones, consoles, PCs, Mac, online, Facebook – you name it. Then the TV, the movie side, it will happen when the time is right.”
