Angry Birds has lost nearly a quarter of its players over the last 22 months, as the mobile gaming giant looks to expand into movies and licensing deals.
The latest figures from Finish game maker Rovio suggest that Angry Birds may have peaked in 2012, but it still has 200m players. Similar reports are happening for King and the popularity of its Candy Crush Saga app as a host of competitor games take the limelight.
The franchise helped take mobile gaming mainstream and remains one of the most popular game series in the world.
When the games’ publisher Rovio announced its financial results in April 2013, it said that Angry Birds ended 2012 with 263m monthly active players. The company did not update that figure in April 2014, when itpublished its financials for 2013.
However, the new 200m figure was revealed this week in information sent to journalists ahead of Rovio’s visit to the Brand Licensing Europe conference in London next month.
Recently, the longtime CEO of Rovio, the company who made Angry Birds a household name, was replaced due to a steep fall in profits.
Mikael Hed, the co-founder and longtime CEO of Rovio Entertainment, stepped down in August and Pekka Rantala has been chosen as his successor.
Rovio’s profits fell to 52 percent during the fiscal year of 2013 while its staffing nearly doubled. Hed will now become the chairman of Rovio Animation Studios, which will be producing movies for the company, and was nominated to a Board of Directors position.
This profit drop is most likely due to Angry Birds’ popularity decline. It was a widely popular fad and extended into plenty of marketable areas, but it was forced into being a fad — it was meant to fall.
“It has been an amazing ride and in the coming months I will be very happy to pass the hoodie to Pekka Rantala, who will take Rovio to the next level,” Mikael Hed said. “Pekka is known to be a great leader with experience building successful global consumer brands. I will continue to play an active role and will support Pekka in any way I can to ensure Rovio’s continued success.”