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Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

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Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#11

Post by jonnathanson »

bjacobel wrote: post #4

Was it ever relevant? Popular, sure. But relevant?

How are you distinguishing between the two?

Relevancy is a relative quality. We don't say that something simply is or is not "relevant." It needs to be relevant in relation to something else. Usually some standard or topic.

Recency and popular culture are common guideposts to which we peg relevancy. If we choose to peg relevancy to 'current pop culture,' then we could say Angry Birds is less relevant today than it used to be in its prime. And we'd probably say that Angry Birds was quite relevant in its prime, being the premiere game in the breakthrough period of mainstream mobile gaming.

If we choose to peg relevancy to an industry standard -- say, 'current best practices in the gaming business' -- then we reach a similar conclusion. Angry Birds was hyperrelevant in its heyday, but less so today.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#12

Post by minimaxir »

zaphar wrote: post #10

Sounds like a case of too many eggs in one basket. Why didn't they diversify more into the micro transaction space with a different game I wonder?

They certainly tried with Angry Birds Fight! (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds-fight!/id9339580...) and Angry Birds GO! (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds-go!/id642821482?...)

A few of the more recent physics games had strong freemium mechanics, like Angry Birds Transformers (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds-transformers/id8...) as well.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#14

Post by minimaxir »

prawn wrote: post #9

Don't large game companies frequently shed staff after a large title has been released?

They shed staff because they usually hire on extra staff (Art/QA) to meet deadlines. Mobile game development does not have that dynamic.

The press release (http://rovio.fi/en/news/press-releases/696/rovio-sharpens-fo...) explicitly says it's a cash flow issue.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#15

Post by braythwayt »

jonnathanson wrote: post #11
bjacobel wrote: post #4

Was it ever relevant? Popular, sure. But relevant?

How are you distinguishing between the two? Relevancy is a relative quality. We don't say that something simply is or is not "relevant." It needs to be relevant in relation to something else. Usually some standard or topic. Recency and popular culture are common guideposts to which we peg relevancy. If we choose to peg relevancy to 'current pop culture,' then we could say Angry Birds is less relevant today than it us…

Relevance is measured by influence, popularity by reach at one moment in time. Lots of boy bands are popular, but very few are relevant.

I’m not saying that Angry Birds is or isn’t relevant, but there is a distinction between the two ideas that is fairly easy to observe in the wild.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#17

Post by ceejayoz »

imauld wrote: post #13

> There is one last hope for Rovio — The Angry Birds Movie. Dear god why?

That was my initial response to The LEGO Movie, which wound up being one of the best movies of the year. It'll all depend on the team behind it.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#18

Post by phn »

tfandango wrote: post #6

I'm not surprised, they have been cranking out the same game over and over again, re-branded and/or adding slightly different abilities without changing the basic game. After playing the Star Wars version for a little while I deleted it because the concept (while initially fun and interesting) had gotten old. They did release something called "Bad Piggies" too which I thought was a fun different game but along the sa…

They also tried publishing different games, Amazing Alex for example. The truth is, for such simple things and for this definition of "success" (i.e. being the global hit of the moment) there is no formula.

For a comparison, look at King, what success do they have outside of candy crush? And it's not for the lack of games as they have quite a few.

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#19

Post by larrik »

distances wrote: post #7
larrik wrote: post #2

The article paints Angry Birds 2 as a paid app losing out to freemium apps, but when I downloaded it, it was a free app with way too many freemium parts. I deleted it shortly after, as I'm not interested in freemium mobile apps.

Not really, the article quite clearly says "... and its freemium model doesn’t seem to be working great." At the end the article mentions the game wasn't designed with the current freemium model in mind (since the first iteration was pay-to-install), maybe that threw you off?

Very well could have

Re: Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant

#20

Post by josho »

The key lesson here is that entertainment companies are closer to gambling than outsiders realize. That is, to turn an entertainment company into a viable long term business you need to diversify and reduce risk of new title launches. That's why we see the large game companies producing sequels as opposed to launching new IP or game concepts.

A mobile company that understands this model is tell tale games.

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