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%26ldquo;We want to be the first entertainment brand with a billion fans,%26rdquo; Rovio head Peter Vesterbecka told attendees of Seattle's Casual Connect show this week. %26ldquo;That will take us two or three years to do. Next year, we want to be the leading entertainment brand in China.%26rdquo; Rovio, who says its Angry Birds has been the fastest entertainment brand in history to gain 100 million monthly active users, is enthusiastically pursuing the Chinese market, with Chinese-language versions of Angry Birds, a Shanghai office and a store built for the sole purpose of equipping Chinese consumers with Angry Birds-related paraphernalia. It's all part of the plan to make Angry Birds as big a name as Mario or Mickey Mouse.
Above: Vesterbecka gesticulates to avoid being mistakenly loaded into a slingshot
%26ldquo;All of our enterprises have to be insanely profitable,%26rdquo; says Besterbecka, %26ldquo;and so far they are.%26rdquo; The company isn't going the usual route of establishing a presence and following up with new IP: %26ldquo;Game makers buy into their own bullshit. You think you can make hit after hit. We know how hard it is to do that.%26rdquo; Rovio released 51 games before finding success with Angry Birds, a mascot-ready spin on the %26ldquo;catapult physics%26rdquo; genre established by titles like Armor Games' Crush the Castle. Hence Rovio is %26ldquo;betting everything on Angry Birds%26rdquo; in the effort to propel the brand to the same level of ubiquity as characters like Mario. Do you think their strategy will pay off?
Jul 21, 2011
Source:VentureBeat
