Angry Birds 2 has just passed $500m in lifetime revenue and 360m downloads since its July 2015 launch, according to Appmagic data.
So it’s no surprise that Rovio has deprioritised the remake of the original game, as announced last week. The move has caused consternation for some, but what Rovio can’t say publicly is that this is partly Apple and Google’s fault.
Mobilegamer.biz understands that Rovio’s older, de-prioritised games are served so prominently in search results and elsewhere on the stores that Rovio has had to take matters into its own hands to guide players to the company’s newer, fuller-featured and more regularly updated games.
The remake of the original is severely limited both in terms of content and monetisation, so Rovio has been testing ways to reduce the prominence of the game in on-store search results. It has been experimenting with store optimisation like this ever since the launch of Angry Birds 2 in 2015, due to its large legacy portfolio.
In the last year, according to Appmagic data, Angry Birds 2 generated $80m in revenue; the remade original, now known as Red’s First Flight on iOS, made just $800k. So while the business case couldn’t be clearer, Apple and Google’s search algorithms don’t take that into account.
Some more interesting data on Angry Birds 2: the platform split breaks down as $282m in IAP and 135m installs on iOS and $219m revenue and 226m downloads on Google Play.
The top five Angry Birds 2 markets by revenue are the US ($316m), Germany ($27m), UK ($24m), Canada ($15m) and France ($12m); by downloads the top five markets are the US (68m), India (41m), Brazil (27m), Russia (23m) and China (21m).
Angry Birds Dream Blast is Rovio’s second best performer right now. Lifetime downloads for that game stand at 45m, with $176m in IAP revenue earned to date. $50m of that lifetime revenue has come in the last year alone, with 10m downloads registered for the same period. Again, all data is according to Appmagic.
As announced last week, Rovio Classics: Angry Birds, a remake of the original game, has now been renamed as Red’s First Flight on iOS, and de-listed entirely on Google Play. The remake is also still available through Apple Arcade, where it is known as Angry Birds Reloaded, and anyone that had downloaded the game previously in all of its forms will still be able to play the game on their device.
It’s been a busy period for Rovio – it also continues to weigh up buyout interest from several suitors after Playtika went public with an offer to buy the company for over $800m in January.
