Angry Birds reaches half a billion downloads
Angry Birds has reached the 500 million downloads milestone, just months after announcing 350 million.
Those who have never downloaded or played Angry Birds are quickly becoming a minority class, as Rovio has now announced new milestone. The game has now been downloaded 500 million times. That's a big number, proving that people just can't get enough of slinging feathered kamikaze birds at greedy green pigs.
The noteworthy achievement here is how the game seems to be bucking the trend of progressively slower success and instead picking up speed. In early September, it had achieved 350 million downloads. It launched in late 2009, meaning that it took almost two years to reach 350 million, but only two months to stack on another 150 million. Of course, it can't hurt that it comes in multiple flavors, and is available on just about every platform.
Still, Rovio took the opportunity to give their wunderkind a hearty pat on the back. "This is a fantastic landmark achievement for us, and we're extremely delighted to see such an incredible amount of people enjoying our games," said CEO Mikael Hed in the announcement. "We remain committed to creating more fun experiences and bringing exceptional quality to Angry Birds Fans everywhere."
Currently Rovio is planning the grand opening of an Angry Birds retail shop in Helsinki, Finland, which will specialize in Angry Birds merchandise. Meanwhile, the company has acquired an animation studio to produce cartoons. This is happening, people. This is happening.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Angry Birds reaches half a billion downloads.
Angry Birds has reached the 500 million downloads milestone, just months after announcing 350 million.-
whew.... glad i didnt add to the milestone lol
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...Because?
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he only plays non mainstream games. Hipster gamer.
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derp
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interedasting
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The original first few sets of levels are fine. Anything past that just gets super repetitive and there is like this very specific exact trajectory that you have to get for 3 stars. The moment I ended up accidentally clearing my save file was the moment I couldn't stomach playing again.
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You have to have some level of OCD to stick with the game. Personally, it tweaked me just right and I obsessively 3-starred all 500+ levels before finally breaking the cycle and deleting the game before the iOS5 upgrade (so there would be no cloud save to restore from if I ever installed it again).
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so man i so much agree with this..also they added a new box recently!
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It's not just the game. They have advertising deals featuring the Angry Birds (pistachios), movie tie-ins (Rio), and merchandising. I saw at least 5 different people dressed as Angry Birds for halloween.
Now, there is certainly a question of whether they can continue their success, but their valuation is rightfully quite high right now. -
Why? I value myself in the hundreds of googols of dollars. Self-valuation doesn't mean a thing.
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That's not how this is being reported. The valuation number is coming based on them seeking funding (which according to them they don't even need). They even think their valuation is significantly higher than $1.2B.
It's self-reported valuation from a company that doesn't need to report any information to the public about it's books other than what it specifically wants to.
They could be claiming that they are worth $14B while simultaneously checking couch cushions for spare change to make payroll--and no one outside of the organization would have any information to the contrary.-
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Haiku, have you been following Rovio? Making ridiculously claims about their own value is their SOP.
What I'm saying is that $1.2B is the reported valuation based on rumors that they are seeking $42M of funding. But they then make ridiculous claims like "we're worth way more than that."
I'll be interested to see what happens with Zynga. I don't put a lot of stock in their internal valuation, either. They claim they're worth $20B. Yeeeeah. From the folks I've spoken to in industry (especially those who have decided to leave Zynga), I'm not at all convinced that Zynga isn't also just a money grab.-
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Dude, of course this stuff is all just "IMHO", but that's what valuation is in the first place--it's someone's "HO".
To me, neither Zynga's nor Rovio's floated valuation passes the smell test. I'm most definitely not the only one. (Zynga's valuation, for example, would place them firmly at the value of EA and Activision--combined. Even if you might buy that Zynga should be more valuable than EA, it's hard to make a compelling argument that they should be more valuable than Activision/Blizzard).
You're welcome to tell me how it works for your private company. I'm not saying that all private companies float complete bullshit valuations. On the other hand, when the maker of one game--which they release for free, but ad supported--claims to be worth $1.2B, it's hard to see how that could possibly be so.
The closest company we have for comparison is Popcap, who was valued at around $750M before EA purchased them. And people thought that might be too high, because they have to develop hit games in order to remain profitable. As if Angry Birds is going to have staying power for the next 5 years, and doesn't have exactly the same problem (but without the proven track record of having developed more than one hit game).
Frankly, Zynga looks like a money grab. They have one successful product, which relies on the goodwill of Facebook to exist. They have freely admitted that all of their revenue comes from this product, and that 95% of their "customers" don't pay them any money at all. Moreover, the first that almost anyone heard of them (beyond the people playing Farmville) was that they were behaving in business practices that were--at best--highly questionable.
Obviously at the end of the day, whether you believe the valuation reported by a private company that was derived with private data in private dealings is correct or not is up to you.
For me, it doesn't pass the smell test.-
Zynga has far more than one successful product. CityVille is bigger than Farmville, and they have a number of other properties now (Mafia Wars still has pretty high DAU). And yes they rely on Facebook to exist, in the same way that a big iOS developer relies on Apple to exist. They're looking to divorce themselves from Facebook with their own platform already. That 95% of players pay nothing isn't unique to Zynga, that's the free to play model, which plenty of traditional MMOs are now happy to take.
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That doesn't make any of those companies worth $20B.
Look, I'm neither the first person to say that these types of valuations are insane, nor am I the most financially educated person to say it. There are a dozen articles that you can trivially find from google right now written by learn-ed individuals on why this is pretty much bubble 2.1.
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First off, it's "humble opinion."
Most fundamentally, valuation is the the process of estimating what something is worth Totally stolen straight from wikipedia. There are many ways of doing it. Because it's an estimate, it can absolutely be wrong.
When a company is public, it's easy for someone to say "this company's valuation is this, and here's how I determined it," because the information needed to determine valuation through most types of calculations is readily available--the results are repeatable. The valuation could still be wrong for any of a number of reasons. It happens all the time--especially when their valuation is derived strongly from expected future earnings and less from current or historical profitability.
When a company is private, the information to determine their valuation is not publicly available. They can say their valuation is whatever the hell they want to. They could genuinely believe it. Or they could be trying to drive up the perceived value of their brand prior to a round of fund raising--either through private equity or through an IPO.
What you're talking about is simply value: Is the company worth X? That's obviously a market question--the company has said "we think we're worth X, would you like to buy shares?" I don't dispute this at all. If people agree, then the value was reasonable to them and the market has spoken (as you've said). -
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Haven't there been plenty of companies who have largely misrepresented their financial situations in order to score larger valuations and spur investment?
For instance, after some scrutiny Groupon had to massively scale back on their reported revenue and their valuation shrunk accordingly. But they were still able to come out with the initial, arguably flawed, report and valuation. I'm sure they're far from the only company that has done so. I'm sure you could find dozens of similar companies during the dot-com bubble.
That kind of 'clever accounting' has been used a lot in the tech industry. -
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I saw a kiosk at the mall last night that was an Angry Birds kiosk. It sold nothing but Angry Birds toys.
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I can make them cheaper than they sell them for. I spent all last winter learning amigurumi crocheting and made one of every bird. They are pretty awesome actually.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28238018@N04/5725374454/in/set-72157625863353858 - these are the three red birds I made. I will look for the other pics if anyone cares to see them.
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