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Angry Birds developer Rovio has set itself the goal of attracting 1bn fans as it plans to crack the Chinese market.
The Finnish mobile giant said it wants to grow Angry Birds into a long-term brand as big as Mario or Mickey Mouse, rather than try to build a new IP from scratch.
Speaking at the Casual Connect event in Seattle, Rovio’s CMO Peter Vesterbacka said, as reported by VentureBeat: Game makers buy into their own bullshit. You think you can make hit after hit. We know how hard it is to do that, so we are betting everything on Angry Birds.
We want to be the first entertainment brand with a billion fans. That will take us two or three years. Next year, we want to be the leading entertainment brand in China.”
An Angry Birds console game for Xbox 360 and PS3 will arrive later this year, while downloadable titles will head to Nintendo 3DS. This game is already available for Apple and Android mobile devices, as well as PSP Minis. It has been downloaded 250m times across all mobile platforms.
A raft of Angry Birds merchandise is available including plush toys and board games. Rovio is launching an Angry Birds-themed cookbook in August, while location-based platform Angry Birds Magic will be integrated into all Angry Birds titles going forwards.
Our goal is to design our own products and keep control of them,” added Vesterbacka.
When asked if Rovio wants to become the next Pixar, he replied: We’re not so full of ourselves as to think that yet. Pixar is as good as it gets."
