Angry Birds dev: We’re worth more than PopCap

Angry Birds developer Rovio is worth more than PopCap, the studio that EA just bought for more than $750 million. Or rather, that’s the opinion of Ville Heijari – Rovio’s vice president of franchise development.

Heijari says that Rovio has been approached by prospective buyers, but that the studio’s high price tag – the one set by the company itself – has put people off.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a really relevant discussion of whether somebody is going to buy us,” Heijari told Eurogamer.

“It was never a strategy here to quickly cash in on anybody who comes waving a wad of cash our way,” he added. “Of course like any business if the price is right, ha!

“But we’ve set the bar pretty high from early on, because we really think we have a lot of opportunities with our Angry Birds IP and there’s a lot of creativity at the studio beyond Angry Birds. It was never a strategy here to quickly cash in on anybody who comes waving a wad of cash our way.

“But the valuation from our point of view is somewhere, I dunno, maybe north of PopCap.”

Heijari was also keen to dismiss the idea that Rovio might be a one-trick pony.

“A lot of people look at our game and say, ‘Who do these guys think they are with their one title?’ There’s a lot of different stuff going on. We have a lot of different stuff in the pipeline.”

All the same, it seems clear that Rovio won’t be abandoning the Angry Birds brand anytime soon. And given how many people are still playing the game, who can blame them?

“We already have quite a big reach with this one title. We want to now leverage that reach and bring more social experiences, more delightful games to an already established audience. Not to say milk the Angry Birds titles as long as they can go, but really create sustainable characters and sustainable property and build a really massive brand out of Angry Birds.”