Rovio 'betting everything' on Angry Birds

Finnish studio going after 1 billion fans.

Angry Birds developer, Rovio Mobile, has expressed its desire to be the first entertainment brand to reach a billion fans. To do that, it's putting all its eggs in the Angry Birds basket.

"Game makers buy into their own bullshit." said Rovio's CMO Peter Vesterbacka, speaking at the Casual Connect event in Seattle. "You think you can make hit after hit. We know how hard it is to do that, so we are betting everything on Angry Birds."

"We want to be the first entertainment brand with a billion fans. That will take us two or three years. Next year, we want to be the leading entertainment brand in China."

Angry Birds has been downloaded over 250 million times since it first launched, with merchandise sales soaring to over 3 million.

Rovio is also launching a book in August titled "Bad Piggies Secret Egg Recipes," a cookbook about ways to prepare eggs.

"Our goal is to design our own products and keep control of them," Vesterbacka explained.

The ultimate aim is to turn Angry Birds into a long-term brand like Mickey Mouse or Mario. When asked if the studio will become the next Pixar, Vesterbacka responded: "We're not so full of ourselves as to think that yet. Pixar is as good as it gets."

Via VentureBeat