Angry Birds-maker
Rovio Entertainment will be hoping to prove it's no one-hit wonder when it launches Bad
Piggies on Thursday, just as players seem to be tiring of the game they've been addicted to for the past three years.
The new game will feature pigs which strike back at the birds who attacked them with slingshots in Angry Birds. A hit on
app stores would give the Finnish company a boost as it looks to a possible stock market flotation next year.
Some
analysts put its market value at between $6 billion and $9 billion,
nearly on a par with another top Finnish tech name, phone maker
Nokia Oyj.
Rovio was founded in 2003 and became a global phenomenon after it launched Angry Birds for Apple Inc's
iPhone in late 2009. The highly-addictive game helped
Rovio's sales jump 10-fold to $100 million last year, a fraction of the 38.7 billion
euros ($50.2 billion) which
Nokia
chalked up. It has remained at the top of gaming charts, with more than
a billion downloads, and had 200 million monthly users at the end of
2011. That compares for instance with the 240 million attracted by
offerings from US-based
Zynga Inc, such as the Facebook -based
Farmville.
But there are signs
Rovio is losing its momentum. Amazing Alex, the first
non-Angry Birds game in more than two years from
Rovio,
hit No 1 on download charts in July but has since slumped to outside
the top 50, while Angry Birds Space has dropped fast from the
top-grossing lists.
"
Rovio needs a big hit right now. Over the past two months,
Rovio's revenue-generation ability has suddenly slipped badly," said analyst
Tero Kuittinen from Finnish mobile
analytics firm
Alekstra.
Brand powerIn Bad
Piggies, instead of shooting with a slingshot, players build vehicles that help the characters get the birds' eggs.
The company said it was hoping the new game would breathe additional life into its brand. "We see Bad
Piggies as a long-term brand-building exercise. In three years from now we want to see Angry Birds and Bad
Piggies as strong vibrant brands out there,"
Petri Jarvilehto, head of gaming at
Rovio, said in an interview.
Rovio
is also expanding into merchandising, modelling its long-term strategy
on Walt Disney Co by selling a range of stuffed animals and other toys,
as well as branded playground equipment which then bolster branding for
its games.
If successful, the company says it could go public as soon as next year, offering a possible payday to its backers.
Last year,
Rovio raised $42 million from venture capital firms including
Accel Partners, which previously backed Facebook and
Baidu, and Skype founder
Niklas Zennstroem's venture capital firm,
Atomico
Ventures. Last year some 30% of turnover came from items other than
games, but it is the group's on-screen inventiveness which is the
crucial factor in its prospects. "
Rovio needs to re-establish its reputation for creating hits with legs (staying power),"
Kuittinen
said. "There is no doubt that the pig game will hit number 1 at launch.
But it has to stay in top ten for half a year to erase the doubts that
the fast fade of Amazing Alex has created."
Taiwan's HTC unveiled its first smartphones powered by Microsoft's
Windows on Wednesday, in a boost for the US software giant's efforts to
break into a market dominated by Apple and Google.
HTC and Microsoft previewed the 8X and 8S handsets in New York, boasting
that they feature "iconic
design," studio-quality sound and "incredible camera capabilities."
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