Recently, Rovio released their earnings for 2013 and while a lot of the internet has been predicting the Angry Birds have squawked their last, but in reality, Rovio has simply invested more of their money in other avenues, which is why their net profits have fallen by almost as much as 50% when compared to results from 2012. Still, there’s definitely some work needed to be done in order to keep Angry Birds fresh and who knows, maybe it’s time for a new franchise to bring a little more life back to Rovio’s mobile offerings?
As the Guardian is reporting, Rovio’s net profits were pretty much cut in half in 2013 compared to 2012, with €55.5 Million in 2012 shrinking to €26.9 Million in 2013. These aren’t great figures no matter how you look at them, but 2013 was an expensive year for Rovio, they launched the Angry Birds ToonsTV line of cartoons and continued to invest in merchandise such as plush toys, board games and toys. Rovio’s merchandising arm accounted for 47% of their overall profits in 2013, which is nothing to be sniffed at, after all the game did start off as a simple mobile title only available on one phone. Now, they’re selling everything from toys to even coffee.
Chief Financial Officer, Herkkop Soininen, said that “after three years of very strong growth, 2013 was a foundation-building year” and we’re inclined to believe him. Every company, no matter how big or small needs to put own roots in order to keep growth moving, sometimes that results in a stall like this, and other times it doesn’t. Still, we doubt Rovio could keep up the growth with just a mobile game alone, and even though Angry Birds Go was a nice change of pace for the company, games alone won’t keep the company going. Especially as their competitors experience explosive growth which is more than likely to fizzle out at some point as gamers move from one game to the next quicker than ever before.