Peter Vesterbacka, Maker of Angry Birds Talks about the Birds, Apple, Android, Nokia, and Palm/HP
Posted on 27. Dec, 2010 by hilzfuld in iPhone, Tech
By: Hillel Fuld
There are many speculations regarding the cause of the recent global economic recession, but we all know the truth. It was the Angry Birds and their effect on the productivity of the work force. Angry Birds is a true mobile wonder with over 50 million downloads, 80% of users keeping the app installed, and as Peter Verterbacka, the “Mighty Eagle” of Rovio, makers of Angry Birds puts it, that number is without the holiday stats, which broke a record of a million downloads a day.
Another mind boggling statistic about Angry Birds, and you should sit down for this one, is that there are 200 million minutes played a day on a global scale. As Peter put it, that number compares favorably to anything, including prime time TV, which indicates that 2011 will be a big year in the shift of advertisers’ attention from TV to mobile. As a person who is starting a new position at Inneractive, a company that specializes in monetizing mobile apps using advertising, these predictions for 2011 put a smile on my face.
Finally, the Angry Birds recently participated in a peace treaty with the pigs on TV, a video which quickly experienced a viral explosion. You can watch that peace treaty video here.
1. Please tell me about yourself, the team, and how the Angry Birds phenomenon (so much more than a single app) came to be.
“Angry Birds came to be by a very analytical approach. Rovio has been in the business of mobile games since 2003 and has made 50+ games before Angry Birds, most of them work for hire for people like EA, GameHouse, Nokia etc. So the team knows how to make games, for example Bounce for Nokia has been installed on 250M+ devices. The team that created Angry Birds was 12 people, now Rovio is 50 people, quite a change in 12 months.
Anyway, the game was built around the characters that Jaakko Iisalo, our game designer, came up with. The original idea was very different, but everybody loved the birds, so it was decided to build a game around the birds. Over the next 8 months Angry Birds became the game we know today. Hit the appstore Dec 2009, slow start, number one in Finland, then Sweden, number one in UK in April and then things really took off. Have been number one since in both UK and US. Number one in 77 countries. Number one longer than anybody else. 50M+ downloads across platforms.”
2. You must have had some serious experts in various fields on the team when creating Angry Birds. Please share with us the preparation that went into it.
“Everybody on the team has more than 5 years of game making experience, so yes, serious experts;-)”
3. I have tried your games on various platforms including Maemo (Bounce). How do you view the various mobile OSs in regard to the future of mobile technology? Which will prevail?
“Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right. And they know what they are doing and they call the shots. Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on Android.
Besides Apple and Google, it will be interesting to see how long it will take for Nokia to get their act together. MeeGo is clearly the future there, remains to be seen how big and how soon. HP-Palm webOS is a really cool OS and has been a pleasure developing for that one, but the volume is irrelevant for the time being. Everything else is more or less “interesting” right now, ie no real business to be had, at least not yet.”
4. I have heard Angry Birds was the most sold app on the App Store until it was recently surpassed by Cut the Rope. Have you tried Cut the Rope? What did you think?
“Angry Birds has been outselling Cut the Rope all the time except for a brief period of 2 weeks during the launch of Cut the Rope. It’s a great game and it deserves all the success it has had. And the guys that developed Cut the Rope have a long experience in building games, they are not new to games either, so have that in common.
5. How do you explain the wild success of Angry Birds? Luck, good promotion by you, or does all the credit go to the birds and their addictive nature?
A combination of many things. Optimized for touch, great characters, everybody loves the birds. And we like to think that we know a thing or two about how to work together with our fans and community too, ie the future of marketing.”
6. What are the most important steps a developer should take when creating a mobile app? Can you name the first five steps?
“1. Create a great app
2. Get the message out”
7. Your recent Android release was a huge success. Why did you choose Getjar over the Android Market and are you happy you did?
“We didn’t really pick one over the other, but we liked the attitude of the GetJar team, they really worked with us to make the launch a success and a big deal. Not just another game to them. We have been very happy with our results on Android and the fact that we decided to have a multiple storefront strategy. And most of all that we decided to go with a free, ad supported model. 15M+ downloads is a good start too.”
8. How important is the role of social media, specifically Twitter is the success of your apps and your company?
“It’s very important. For us twitter is a great way to keep our finger on the pulse, we very quickly know what our fans think about new features + our fans are great at alerting us about things. We hear about a lot of developments on twitter first. And in our business speed is of essence.”
9. Why did you decide to make the Android version free and is that going to change any time soon?
“Free is the way to go with Android. Nobody has been successful selling content on Android. We will offer a way to remove the ads by paying for the app, but we don’t expect that to be a huge revenue stream.”
10. What do you think of the whole Android fragmentation issue and Steve Jobs’ recent rant about Android (audio here)? Did you meet difficulties when developing for Android?
“Fragmentation on the device side is not a huge problem, but Steve is absolutely right when he says that there are more challenges for developers when working with Android. But that’s fine, developers will figure out how to work any given ecosystem and as long as it doesn’t cause physical pain, it’s ok;-) Nobody else will be able to build what Apple has built, there just isn’t that kind of market power out there.
That doesn’t mean that model is superior, it’s just important to understand that Apple is Apple and Google is Google. Different. And developers need to understand that. Different business models for different ecosystems. And wouldn’t forget about Nokia and MeeGo either, new leadership always tends to shake things up and create opportunity. And HP-Palm. And RIM. And even Microsoft. It’s a fragmented world.”
11. Since the success of the Angry Birds game, you have ventured into different industries such as toys and I have even seen iPhone cases. Can you give us a sneak peek into the future expansions of the Angry Birds phenomenon?
“Yes, toys are there and selling way over our expectations. We sold out immediately and have had big challenges keeping up. Really beefing up our capabilities there, the whole merchandizing business is a huge opportunity for us. We are not happy with our own customer support, that is one area that we are investing heavily into right now. We are not Zappos, but we are big on role models, so we want to become really good at this part of the business as well. We think we can do pretty amazing things when we integrate the merchandizing into our product development.
Making toys like we make games. Of course working with partners and people much smarter and more experienced than we are in the toy business, so we are learning fast. And hope we come up with some cool new ways of doing things. Toys are just the beginning, but we don’t want to rush too fast into stuff we are totally new too, so you will see a reasonably slow, steady stream of new products. And always expect the unexpected…”
The following is a video of Peter’s interview with the mobile ads team over at Google, hope you enjoyed my interview, I definitely learned a lot…
158 Responses to “Peter Vesterbacka, Maker of Angry Birds Talks about the Birds, Apple, Android, Nokia, and Palm/HP”
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January 7, 2011
[...] on their devices. According to Peter Verterbacka from Rovio, the makers of the game, there are 200 million minutes a day spent playing the game. The game is also making its way to the Wii, Xbox 360 and [...]
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January 7, 2011
[...] on their devices. According to Peter Verterbacka from Rovio, the makers of the game, there are 200 million minutes a day spent playing the game. The game is also making its way to the Wii, Xbox 360 and [...]
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January 7, 2011
[...] Tech ‘n Marketing) Tags: Android, Angry Birds, App Store, Apple, Google, iOS VorherigerWarum Flash auf einem [...]
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January 7, 2011
[...] on their devices. According to Peter Verterbacka from Rovio, the makers of the game, there are 200 million minutes a day spent playing the game. The game is also making its way to the Wii, Xbox 360 and [...]
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January 7, 2011
[...] on their devices. According to Peter Verterbacka from Rovio, the makers of the game, there are 200 million minutes a day spent playing the game. The game is also making its way to the Wii, Xbox 360 and [...]
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January 7, 2011
[...] on their devices. According to Peter Verterbacka from Rovio, the makers of the game, there are 200 million minutes a day spent playing the game. The game is also making its way to the Wii, Xbox 360 and [...]
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January 7, 2011
[...] it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. [...]
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January 9, 2011
Can the Motorola Xoom beat the iPad in terms of UI and functionality?…
When looking at the UI and functionality of either device one needs to consider then compare not only the device itself but also interaction with each devices app ecosystem and the apps themselves. So far, Android hasn’t come close to matching the eas…
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January 10, 2011
[...] “Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation is not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google-centric ecosystem,” says Peter Vesterbacka, one of Rovio’s founders and an Angry Bird developer, in a Tech N’ Marketing interview. [...]
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January 13, 2011
[...] we’ll do with all that reclaimed productivity / cognitive surplus. Like, plant trees or play Angry Birds (”200 million minutes played a day on a global scale”!!!) or perfect democracy or [...]
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January 18, 2011
[...] building a phone app, consider what I call the Angry Birds pattern. It is based on the Tech N’ Marketing interview with Peter Vesterbacka. What he has done with a modest sized development team is to create a version of their highly [...]
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January 24, 2011
[...] model to specific app stores. As the CEO of Rovio, creator of the prodigious Angry Birds app, noted: “Free is the way to go with Android. Nobody has been successful selling content on [...]
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January 29, 2011
[...] last year and it’s already become a global addiction. Every day Angry Birds is played an astounding 200 million minutes worldwide, according to Rovio – its [...]
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February 1, 2011
[...] least, incredibly cheap (the “full” version on the iPhone costs a mere $0.99). However, with over 200 million minutes spent playing “Angry Birds” every day, it seems we have accepted video games like never [...]
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February 3, 2011
[...] on the iPhone for months before coming to Android. Rovio executive Peter Vesterbacka said in December that Apple will likely be the No. 1 platform for “a [...]
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February 8, 2011
[...] Patrick told me that the founder of Getjar, Ilja Laurs knows Peter, the Mighty Eagle of Rovio, Peter Vesterbacka, from Finland. When Patrick and Peter ran into each other at CTIA, they sat down for coffee. Peter [...]
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February 9, 2011
[...] all know the Android Market’s bad rap: developers can’t make money on paid apps. Rovio said so. Larva Labs said so. Even Google said so recently, admitting that the number of paid app purchases [...]
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February 10, 2011
[...] all know the Android Market’s bad rap: developers can’t make money on paid apps. Rovio said so. Larva Labs said so. Even Google said so recently, admitting that the number of paid app purchases [...]
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February 15, 2011
[...] Mobile apps that have reached stardom are almost always the simplest of the bunch. It is true for Angry Birds, it is true for Instagram, and it is true for [...]
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March 15, 2011
[...] addition, Rovio does not stop making headlines and the latest was Peter Vesterbacka’s statement that tablets are killing gaming consoles. Rovio later tweeted that “the comment [...]
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March 24, 2011
[...] Interview With Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio This entry was posted in Mobile and tagged Android, Games. Bookmark the permalink. ← There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are The race for mobile industry supremacy is far from over → [...]
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March 26, 2011
[...] Angry Bird developer Peter Vesterbacka told TechNMarketing: “Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation [...]
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April 8, 2011
[...] to revamp the payment methods due to a feeling that the users just weren’t buying apps. (A reputation Android users have developed over the [...]
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April 17, 2011
[...] Peter Vesterbacka explained, the characters of their wildly popular game were loved by all upon creation, and while the [...]
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May 2, 2011
[...] in this space, but there is one thing in common for all developers, small and big. Whether you are Rovio or EA, or you are a small developer working on your first app in your basement, there is major [...]
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May 5, 2011
[...] at the end of 2010, Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka said: …paid content just doesn’t work on [...]
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May 23, 2011
[...] to interview include Robert Scoble (Scobleizer), Ben Parr (Mashable), MG Siegler (TechCrunch), Peter Vesterbacka (Angry Birds), and even my first childhood crush, Alyssa Milano. This interview with the Web [...]
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May 26, 2011
[...] Tech N' Marketing ] ?? ?????o [...]
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May 29, 2011
[...] Peter Vesterbacka, Maker of Angry Birds Talks about the Birds …Dec 27, 2010 … According to Peter Verterbacka from Rovio, the makers of the game, there are 200 million minutes a day spent playing the game. … [...]
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June 4, 2011
[...] [...]
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July 3, 2011
[...] -Peter Versterbacka: In today’s mobile industry, if there is one developer that rules the market, it is Rovio, thanks to their games including Angry Birds, and others. Rovio, by all standards has done some phenomenal marketing work, and Peter is the “Mighty Eagle” in charge of the company’s marketing strategy. Peter is also a really nice guy who does not let his success get to his head. He is responsive, professional, and a true role model. [...]
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July 7, 2011
[...] (source) [...]
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July 26, 2011
[...] not the only one distracted by green pigs. Peter Verterbacka, of Rovio (makers of Angry Birds) estimates 200 million minutes of play per day across the globe. Expect to see that number grow. Rovio recently surpassed a million downloads a [...]
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August 11, 2011
[...] 44: Peter Vesterbacka: The Mighty Eagle of Rovio, Peter is the marketing guy over at Rovio and one of the main people behind the unprecedented success of Angry Birds. I interviewed him here. [...]
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October 19, 2011
[...] history of Rovio and the birds is well known, but how Angry Birds became the industry name for a successful app, the way iPod became the name [...]
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October 19, 2011
[...] opportunities for businesses to create some real gems that can be monetized in the mobile space. Take #Angry Birds for example. This app has experienced millions of downloads and has sparked a global frenzy. I’m left [...]
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November 7, 2011
[...] rise in the 10+ games category. This tallies with the story of the developer of Angry Birds only striking gold after many lots of games. It also fits with my PhD research of development being an iterative and evolutionary process; each [...]
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November 15, 2011
[...] hours, returning day after day to play again and again. Last year, statistics showed that globally, Angry Birds ate up 200 million minutes a day. That’s what you call [...]
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November 19, 2011
[...] Rejoignez le Communauté Facebook [...]
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December 11, 2011
[...] Source : Tech n’ marketing [...]
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April 2, 2012
[...] – Angry Birds: Illuminating interview with Peter Vesterbacka, who heads up games developer Rovio, maker of Angry Birds. Two interesting points: he says that Apple still king of the app stores, for its clean way of delivering paid apps, and GetJar was a great way of getting on to the Android platform. (via Tech n’ Marketing) [...]
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April 3, 2012
[...] game), took the GetJar route when it expanded into Android. By the end of December, Rovio had 15 million+ downloads on the [...]
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April 9, 2012
[...] profile of the non-native app stores on the market today, with 1.75 billion downloads to date and a stellar endorsement from the Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka on why it was so important to get Angry Birds on the GetJar [...]
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April 18, 2012
I am starting a new gaming startup and I need to know Flash or HTML 5. With Internet Explorer supporting HTML 5 in the future, is it still worth my time?…
A few good points I capture from your reply and let me try to advance this a bit: HTML5 vs monetizing. I don’t see these two connected at all. Rovio’s choice of implementation, has had more complex reasoning behind, IMO. The Chrome version was target…
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April 24, 2012
[...] Peter Vesterbacka, Maker of Angry Birds Talks about the Birds, Apple, Android, Nokia, and Palm/HP | … [...]
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Peter Vesterbacka, Maker of Angry Birds Talks about the Birds, Apple, Android, Nokia, and Palm/HP
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Mark Fidelman
27. Dec, 2010
The video is a must watch for game developers.
orange business mobile
27. Dec, 2010
Making toys like we make games. Of course working with partners and people much smarter and more experienced than we are in the toy business, so we are learning fast. And hope we come up with some cool new ways of doing things. Toys are just the beginning,
Cat MacKinnon
28. Dec, 2010
i wish they’d work on a version for Blackberry. Android and iPhones are the current tech trend, which is understandable since they’re both comparatively new compared to other smartphone platforms, but BB’s still hold one of the top slots worldwide as far as smartphone use. just because it’s been around for a while doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. i’ve seen threads on pretty much every single Blackberry forum wondering when we’ll get Angry Birds, and it’s very safe to assume there are TONS of Blackberry users that would love this. i think if they went with a similar model to the Android version (free with ads, pay to remove ads), it would do very well. there are plenty of premium games for Blackberry that sell very well, and with RIM shifting to QNX starting with the Playbook, i think RIM is finally starting to really acknowledge that smartphones are used for much more than just business these days.
Mathias Penz
28. Dec, 2010
Vesterbacka ist right: Android sucks in Terms of Payment-Methods. Who is willing to give Creditcard Data to Google?
Google should open payment methods for Android to carrier Billing, which is way more comfortable to customers, easy and secure.
daragh
28. Dec, 2010
when was the interview? seems months ago…
hilzfuld
28. Dec, 2010
Daraph, nope, why do you say that?
will
29. Dec, 2010
I actually didn’t know that the Android version was free, but I bet an ad supported full game of AB would be successful on iOS too, especially with kids who have a tighter iTunes allowance
Bill
29. Dec, 2010
To the guy who asked about Blackberry version:
The game is touch centric. Blackberry has the absolute worst touchscreen technology in the world. Till they release a good touchscreen phone there won’t be any good games on it. You couldn’t possibly play Angry Birds with the touchpad or marble on a Blackberry. QNX and Playbook won’t save RIM. They are going down hard.
Greg
29. Dec, 2010
Nokia seem to have got left behind. My N97 Mini is a superb phone (I’m comparing my esperience with that of Colleagues with Windows and Android phones) just with an elderly OS.
I see there is a version of Angry Birds for S3 – lots of us run s60v5 (the touchscreen os, in 5800s and the like) – will there ever be a version for us?
Cube
29. Dec, 2010
“Google should open payment methods for Android to carrier Billing, which is way more comfortable to customers, easy and secure.”
Google have said that PayPal will be added as an option in the Marketplace, and leaks show that carrier billing may be an option in the future.
Itamar
29. Dec, 2010
I agree!
birbeck
29. Dec, 2010
Google Checkout is the second largest integrated payment solution for merchants trailing only behind PayPal. It is used by millions of people every day to purchase not just Android apps but products and services from millions of merchants and websites across the world. Your credit card data is most certainly secure.
AT&T just launched the first carrier billing solution for Android a few days ago and others will follow shortly. I have already seen several orders come through for my Android apps from “AT&T Mobility”.
Ian Goss
29. Dec, 2010
First para, correct word is *effect* not *affect*. A trained journalist would not have made this error. Do better!