Angry Birds News: Rovio Exec Discusses Series, Creating Global Brand

Peter Vesterbacka, chief financial officer for Angry Birds' developer Rovio, recently discussed the mobile game franchise's success, revealing new details about the game's origins. 

Vesterbacka explained that, despite the initial doubts some had about Angry Birds' potential success, the franchise has enjoyed billions of downloads over the course of the history of the series.

"If you look at Rovio and what we've done over four years, there are now two billion copies of Angry Birds out there. I thought I was super-ambitious in 2010 when I said we'll make $100 million and everyone else thought I was crazy, but it's very important people thought I was insane for saying $100 million back then," said Vesterbacka, according to Mobile Entertainment.

Even though Rovio and Angry Birds have seen more successful than most companies, Vesterbacka is quick to point out that these figures do not factor into how engaged players are in the game, despite the game's monstrous number of downloads per month.

"Download figures tell you nothing about engagement, but we still have 200 million people playing Angry Birds every month, the size of the Twitter audience."

The executive also revealed that Angry Birds was part of a long process of creating games. The company did not set out trying to make the world's next global brand, he said.

"Becoming a brand is very, very important. For every Angry Birds there are many not-so successful games. If you're serious about games you need to be serious about marketing and branding. We started as a mobile games company ten years ago and created 51 games before Angry Birds - it's not easy to stand out and say something like, I'm going to take on Coke and make a soft drink company, nobody in their right mind would."

There is no denying Angry Birds has become the most popular video game today, with console games and other mobile games far behind its huge amount of users and downloads. With Angry Birds becoming much more than just a smartphone game franchise, it looks as though the characters in the game will become the next big cultural icons.