mikael-hed
Latest
Angry Birds publisher cuts layoffs down to 110
Angry Birds publisher Rovio announced plans to cut 16 percent of its workforce in early October, which approximated 130 jobs. That number is now down to 110, as the studio concluded its employee negotiations this week. As part of Rovio's reorganization plans, it opened up "several positions" to internal applicants, so the final number of layoffs for the publisher is expected to change as the company fills those new roles. As part of its restructuring, Rovio will discontinue its Tampere studio and consolidate its operations in Finland to its Espoo branch. The company's profits were halved as of April, resulting in a leadership change at the end of the year as announced in August. As of January 1, 2015, Mikael Hed will step down as CEO and move into the role of Chairman of Rovio Animation Studios, being replaced by Nokia's former Senior Vice President of Pekka Rantala. [Image: Rovio]
Rovio head climbs into slingshot, launching from CEO roost this year
After establishing the effectiveness of poultry as winged demolition teams, Angry Birds series creator Rovio Entertainment has announced its CEO, Mikael Hed, will leave his perch on January 1, 2015. Former Senior Vice President of Nokia Pekka Rantala will fill Hed's position, but until the switch is official, Rantala will work closely with Hed to prevent everything from toppling over like a blocky, pig-filled tower. Though Hed is leaving Rovio's top roost, he has been appointed as Chairman of Rovio Animation Studios and been nominated for a Board of Directors position by Kaj Hed. Rovio's CEO swap is part of what it describes as a "foundation-building year," which follows a steep drop in profits in 2013. [Image: Rovio]
'Angry Birds' maker crowns a new CEO as it reaches a crossroads
Today Mikael Hed announced he would be stepping down as CEO of Rovio and that former Nokia exec Pekka Rantala would be taking his place in 2015. The developer has quickly gone from being a company that no one had ever heard of to one of the biggest names in mobile gaming. How? Almost entirely on the strength of its flagship franchise: Angry Birds. The problem is, nearly five years on, the Angry Birds name just isn't enough any more. The developer continues to churn out new titles at a fairly regular clip, but many are simple rehashes of the standard formula it debuted in 2009 (see Angry Birds Star Wars, Transformers, Rio, Space, Friends and Seasons). And with profits dropping off at an alarming rate the company is at something of a crossroads. In 2013 the company made less than half of what it raked in during 2012. If the company wants to avoid the fate of Zynga, which quickly fell apart after going public, it needs to change now before its problems become unfixable. Whether or not Rantala, who most recently was CEO at Finnish beverage company Hartwall, can save Rovio from the dustbin of history remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure, if he can stop just one more licensed Angry Birds game from being made, the world will be a better place.
Angry Birds devs reveal next game: Amazing Alex
Hot on the heels of its big franchise's 1 billionth download, Angry Birds developer Rovio is introducing its next title: "Amazing Alex." Rovio head Mikael Hed told Finnish television about the game, revealing it to be based on the recently acquired "Casey's Contraptions" property, previously owned by Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut.The only information about Amazing Alex thus far identifies it as part education tool, part game, featuring a boy named – you guessed it – Alex, "who loves to build." If we're going by what we've seen in Casey's Contraptions, Amazing Alex will create Rube Goldberg-esque machines to complete a variety of objectives. Take a look for yourself (at Casey's Contraptions) just below the break.Hed told the Finnish station that "quality pressure is high" internally for Rovio's next project, especially in light of recent Angry Birds milestones. "We want to maintain the high standard Angry Birds fans have come to enjoy." Platforms and a release date for Amazing Alex are currently unknown.[Image above is of Casey's Contraptions, not Amazing Alex.]
The Angry Birds earned Rovio quite a bit of chicken scratch in 2011
The Angry Birds are quite a catch, it seems. Franchise creator Rovio announced this morning that earnings in 2011 topped $100 million, which it owes solely to sales of the Angry Birds franchise. "The heavy investments made in 2011 to all business areas will be seen in future products," Rovio CEO Mikael Hed noted in the press release. "To ensure continuous success we need to be creative and stay focused on entertaining our millions of fans by continuously developing new and innovative products and services." The company earned approximately $67.6 million in pre-tax profit in 2011, or about 64 percent of total revenue.Hed doesn't necessarily mean branching out from his company's most popular franchise, of course. Especially not after such a big year for merchandising surrounding the Angry Birds – Rovio's "consumer products" unit took in "about 30 percent" of 2011's total earnings (approximately $31.9 million). That's a lot of Angry Birds gummy snacks!Rovio's $106.3 million in revenue (not profit, mind you, but revenue) is owed primarily to growth in the Finnish company's Angry Birds games catalog, which expanded by just one game in 2011: a movie tie-in named "Angry Birds Rio." The games have been downloaded approximately 648 million times across all platforms as of Dec. 31, 2011, and have a monthly user base of approximately 200 million.[Image credit: Flickr user 'Nearsoft']
How Rovio CEO's grandparents saved the space program... wait...
Before Apollo 11 made history by successfully shuttling the first humans to the moon in 1969, the space program was in desperate financial condition and President John F. Kennedy had his grandparents mortgage their apartment for the money to keep NASA running. Er, no -- we're getting our stories mixed up here.The bit about the grandparents mortgaging their home to keep a company running is actually the story behind Rovio, the creators of Angry Birds. Rovio was mainly backed by CEO Mikael Hed's dad and it hadn't produced a hit in years before Angry Birds; it was Hed's dad who proposed the family-mortgage plan."He told me that he wanted to mortgage my grandparents' flat so he could put some more money in the company to keep it afloat," Hed told All Things D. "That was pretty tough. I certainly did not want to be the person responsible for putting my grandparents on the street."Hed doesn't have to worry about that now, as Angry Birds is a smash (HA!) hit and Rovio is valued at more than $6 billion. The next game from Rovio is Angry Birds Space, due out for iOS, Android, PC and Mac on March 22, and whose out-of-this-world adorable trailer you can view above.
Ex-Marvel Studios head becomes 'special advisor' at Angry Birds studio
The man responsible for the sale of Marvel Entertainment to Disney, as well as for producing a string of Hollywood blockbusters based on Marvel properties, is now a "special advisor" for Angry Birds creator Rovio. David Maisel left his successful position as the chairman of Marvel Studios after just two years on the job to work with Rovio on building "the company's entertainment strategy." He'll be helping the Finnish studio expand into "new areas in the entertainment business," and will also head up any future Angry Birds films as executive producer, in part reprising his role at Marvel Studios. "I'm very honored and excited to join Rovio ... and the franchise potential of Angry Birds give Rovio the most exciting prospects I have seen in the entertainment business since Marvel in 2003," Maisel overextends in the press release announcing his job appointment. "We welcome his experience and vision as we continue broadening our entertainment production scope at Rovio," CEO Mikael Hed adds, returning the back scratching. Corporate steam blowing aside, we can't help but wonder how Maisel can compare Rovio's one (admittedly very, very popular) property -- Angry Birds -- with Marvel's decades old stable of properties, but then we're also not special advisors to Rovio.
Angry Birds being flung to Facebook
Rovio's continued success with the Angry Birds franchise means we'll be seeing much more from the Finland-based devs in the coming months -- the company says it's taking a "Disney 2.0" approach to fleecing its bird-flinging franchise. "Look at how Disney got started. Steamboat Willie created Mickey Mouse, then they added more characters. You can see the same pattern today, but everything is happening much, much faster," studio lead Mikael Hed explains in a recent Wired UK piece (via Develop), adding, "Other brands used to build recognition over the course of decades. We've done it in one year." A "collaborative" Facebook version of the game, as well as potential sports and driving spin-offs, are specifically named. Hed says the Facebook version will have "completely new aspects to it that just haven't been experienced in any other platform," and that "the pigs will have a more prominent role." No word is given on when the game will launch on the 'book. This is, of course, in addition to the planned XBLA, Wii, and 3DS versions (it's already out on PSN). There's also a board game. And merchandise. And ... uhh ... this terrifying live-action version.
Angry Birds fever continues
Here's one Angry Birds fan who took things to a whole new level. An industrious fan decided to recreate one of her favorite iPhone games using balls, clay, eggs, slingshots and cardboard boxes for a sort of "live" version of the popular iPhone/iPad game. I sure hope that's not a wick on the top of the big black bird ... or do I? Meanwhile, everyone's talking about the previously-reported rumors of an Angry Birds movie. Variety recently spoke with Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio, creator of Angry Birds, where he talked about the success of the game and a short word on a probable sequel. Add to all of this that Angry Birds is slated to hit the Sony PSP, PS3 and the Nintendo DS. Is it possible we'll get sick of all this Angry Birds-ness before it's allowed to become as big as Hed hopes? The title is certainly primes for moving in more directions, so long as Hed gets the ball rolling quickly.
Angry Birds: The Movie?
There's no questioning that the iPhone/iPad game Angry Birds is a huge success. The company is close to seven million downloads of the game, all without any direct advertising of their own. Now the company that developed the game, Rovio, is taking a serious look into more commercial avenues for the title, including movies. The company has already done a great job with the animation within the product, including a cinematic trailer released on YouTube (which I guess you could say is technically advertisement -- check it out after the jump). But is there enough to this to make for a good story? According to Rovio, the company has been approached by several very interested parties, including movie studios, and they're giving all offers serious consideration. Chief exec Mikael Hed has grand ambitions to see the Angry Birds brand become much more than games, akin to Pixar with Toy Story, so games and movies would just be the tip of the iceberg. Do you think something like Angry Birds could translate well enough to other mediums? Is there a potential story in there worth developing?
Topping the App Store charts with Angry Birds
Angry Birds is one of the growing number of phenomenal success stories coming out of the App Store. It's a simple game; you drag birds in a slingshot in order to try and get them to knock down structures and hit green pigs. It's really resonated with audiences, though, and just like we heard with Doodle Jump, a string of constant free updates has propelled it to the top of the charts. I got to talk to Mikael and Niklas Hed, cousins and chief officers at Rovio Mobile (the company behind Angry Birds), last week at E3 about their game and its success so far. They told me that the game has had four million downloads to date across, both, its paid and lite versions, and they said that they'll keep updating it "as long as the underlying market keeps growing." I asked them why they have chosen this model of just supporting the game with free updates, and they pointed to Valve's Team Fortress 2 as an example; they're updating the game just because they're "focused on bringing great value" to their customers. Future updates to the game will include new birds to play around with and a little bit of multiplayer functionality, which is coming in a "huge update" very soon. I also asked about the iPad version (which has gotten some bad reviews, since it's basically the same as the iPhone version), and they said that it was just a matter of resources, but they did want to update that version of the app in the future.
