Stuart Dredge 

Angry Birds has lost 63m players since 2012 (but it still has 200m left)

Latest figures from Rovio reveal its flagship franchise has lost nearly a quarter of its players over the last 22 months. By Stuart Dredge
  
  

Angry Birds may have peaked in 2012 but it still has 200m players.
Angry Birds may have peaked in 2012 but it still has 200m players. Photograph: Stock Experiment / Alamy/Alamy

Angry Birds remains one of the most popular game series in the world, with more than 200m monthly active players. But the franchise appears to have peaked in popularity two years ago.

When the games’ publisher Rovio announced its financial results in April 2013, it said that Angry Birds ended 2012 with 263m monthly active players. The company did not update that figure in April 2014, when it published its financials for 2013.

However, the new 200m figure was revealed this week in information sent to journalists ahead of Rovio’s visit to the Brand Licensing Europe conference in London next month.

The Angry Birds games have been downloaded more than 2bn times since the first title’s launch in late 2009, while videos on Rovio’s Toons TV animation channel have been watched more than 3bn times since it went live in March 2013.

The decline in popularity of the games, which have lost nearly 24% of their active players since the end of 2012, still leaves Rovio with one of the biggest aggregated audiences on smartphones and tablets.

But the signs were there in the company’s last set of financial results. Rovio’s revenues more than doubled from €75.6m in 2011 to €152.2m in 2012, but then only increased slightly to €156m in 2013.

47% of that income came from the company’s consumer products division, including sales of toys, books and other licensed products. That percentage was 45% in 2012, showing that Rovio’s games revenues actually fell slightly – by 1.2% – between 2012 and 2013.

Making 1.2% less money from games played by 24% less people is arguably an achievement many rivals would be quite pleased with, although with Rovio having released more free-to-play games in recent times, its gaming audience might have been expected to grow, not shrink.

2014 has seen Rovio’s chief executive Mikael Hed announce plans to step down, to be replaced as CEO at the start of 2015 by former Nokia marketing executive Pekka Rantala. Hed will remain on Rovio’s board, while also taking up a role as chairman of Rovio’s animation division ahead of the release of the first Angry Birds film in 2016.

Meanwhile, Rovio is continuing to release new Angry Birds games, including the recent release of Angry Birds Stella and the upcoming launch of Angry Birds Transformers, the company’s latest licensing deal.

The company has also moved beyond its traditional bird-slinging gameplay with roleplaying game Angry Birds Epic and racing title Angry Birds Go.

Why Angry Birds are slightly miffed: mobile gaming in 2014

 

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