The astronomical rise of Rovio thanks to its Angry Birds franchise not only served as a pioneer for success on the mobile platform but served as a whole new brand in its own right has caused the company to focus as much on the entertainment side as well as on games. That is according to executive vice president Jami Laes, who claims that of the 800 staff at the studio, less than half are working on games.
Speaking to Games Beat, Laes did emphasize that games are still a core part of the studio. “I think less than half [of staff] are working on games now. But games will always be at the core of Rovio. That’s our heritage. The majority of the folks who have come from different industries to work on different areas of our business, they all experienced the game as their first encounter with the brand. When it comes to future franchises, they’ll most likely see the light of day from the games department, rather than another area of our business.”
As for when we’ll be seeing any new IPs, Rovio has decided to continue focusing on the Angry Birds series. “That’s one of the reasons why Rovio decided, a couple of years ago, to break out of just building the next mobile game, and the one after that. The 52nd game or the 53rd game. Our focus on that one brand resonated so well — taking that to different places and different platforms and different forms of entertainment and different products completely, rather than purely focusing on being a games developer.
“We haven’t broken out anything big because we’ve been building a lot of things in 2013, and in the previous years. We’re building the organisation, building new capabilities, new processes, so that we can have a bigger emphasis on fulfilling that dream of becoming an entertainment powerhouse.
“The bedrock of the company is our focus on building new stuff. In the next couple of years you’ll see new things come out of Rovio. We want to have a balanced diet – birds, pigs, and more. The way we see it, there is no brand, and yet there’s nothing but the brand, in a Zen type of way. Angry Birds is the most important thing for us, but it can’t be the only thing for us.”
Angry Birds will be seeing its own full length feature film in the coming years and any sequels that release are now making their way to next gen consoles along with mobile.