$106million thanks to Angry Birds | Hacker News Reader

$106million thanks to Angry Birds

techcrunch.com

32 pointsTheNonGeeky19 comments

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.

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!

This had already been done, see 'Misunderstood Pigs' in the App Store http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/misunderstood-pigs/id43145100...

They don't need to prove anything.

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?)

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).

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.

As I'm not aware of the differences between Swedish and US ideas of companies, what is the concept of a privately held company versus a publicly traded company in Sweden? If the comparison holds, are the annual reports of privately held companies public information in Sweden as well?

Mojang is privately held but they submit an annual report to the tax authority and once OK'ed by them in the public domain so it can be requested from the authority. There are several companies that log all registered companies and their annual reports and publish them (For a fee to get a pdf of the report) online so it is not directly public per say.

It is also worth noting that privately held companies don't have as extravagant annual reports as the publicly traded ones, just plain boring reports but the essential information is the same.

Personally I like the system for it satisfies my curiosity and I don't see any reason why a company should be able to hide their broader financials - I want the ability to check their solvency before using their services for example.

Anyone could access, at least part, of my personal tax records as well as my grades from High school (and Uni I believe). All in all it is very hard to be anonymous in Sweden if someone bothers to look around.

Now that you say all that, I seem to recall that level of openness being mentioned in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

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?

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

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.

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.

I expect your experience and opinion is somewhat rare. I, like you, have been a gamer since I was a kid, but I don't find Angry Birds boring in the slightest. It scratches a slightly different itch than most full price PC or console games, since it's obviously more casual and repetitive, but it's a simple and engrossing game mechanic that works for me.

It's lack of appeal to hardcore gamers is why it's so successful - you are not Angry Birds' target market. Everyone who is not a gamer is their market, and they have different requirements and experiences than gamers.

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).

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

But can you really build a "sustainable company" on one hit? Coca-Cola comes to my mind. They owe pretty much every possible drink out there - starting with water through original coke ending with energy drinks. They acquire others for a reason. They don't want to be one-drink/hit company even if its Coke. What sustainable product does Rivio have? Thinking that people will play Angry Birds in 10 years is like saying same-size audience plays Pac-Man today like they did 10 yrs ago.

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