Rovio’s Angry Birds and TechCrunch’s gadget guru

Techcrunch:

Making comments on the Angry Birds balloons on stage.

Rovio:

Angry Birds achieved 100 millions download in China this year.  Physical products are catching up at tremendous speed.

We want to license them but there it already the most copied brand here so We will build an official retail store here.

Techcrunch:

Why do you think Angry Birds is so successful here?

Rovio:

It’s pretty much popular everywhere, in Europe, U.S. Korea, not just in China.  We are number 1 USA, China and many more countries.

Techcrunch:

What is your secret sauce?

Rovio:

There’s no secret.  Good games don’t grow on trees, we made 51 games before Angry Birds.  Now that we have a hit, we’re intend to put Angry birds in every major device, console, animation, movies, etc.

Timing is everything.  We were too early, we made our first game in 2003 for Nokia when the ecosystem wasn’t amazing.  So even when we made good games, we didn’t get the distribution.  Thanks to iPhone, the distribution model changes.

As an entrepreneur, you have to believe in yourself, be interested in what you’re doing.  Stay the course!

Techcrunch:

What are your plans next?

Rovio:

We want to be an entertainment brand – more like DC than an EA.

We brought in David, formal executive from Marvel Comics so expect to see a lot of a lot of animated shorts next year.

We also want to do more physical retail products.  We have a cook book coming out and we will publish simultaneously in Chinese and in English.

We want to be more Chinese so we’re hiring a lot of Chinese staff to focus on this market.

We are making comic strips in China in Chinese.  We are taking the Chinese market very seriously, we want to start here, and grow to the rest of the world

We want to create a truly global entertainment brand.

Techcrunch:

Pacman Fever. How will you prevent yourself from being just a fever.

Rovio:

Unlike Pacman, we can reach massive audience. No one needs to put coins in an arcade machine anymore.

We’re also making a movie, Pacman didn’t have that.

We are making the animation ourselves, we actually bought a studio to have total control unlike signing a deal.

Rovio: About the company direction and future.

We only care about 2 things – our fans and our brand, everything else is secondary.

We’re been #1 on apps store for 300 days and the follow up leader was #1 of apps store for 30 days.  We continue to add content and keep our fans happy.  We are serious about fans, we talk to our fans everyday, through Facebook, twitter, renren, kaixin, weibo sns.  We’re always communicating with our  fans in the language of their preference.

Our goal is to reach 1 billion fans around the world and permanent art of entertainment.

Techcrunch

How about doing a Peking Duck bird an have it fly to a frying pan?

Rovio

That would be a good idea!