The game was simple, yet players could not put it down. Angry Birds became the first mobile game to draw over one billion downloads and Rovio fed the insatiable appetite for Angry Birds by continuing to release 21 more Angry Birds games. Rovio last month ended negotiations with Israel’s Playtika Holding Corp. as the pair were discussing a deal valued at more than $800 million. But sometimes things work out for the best as the current talks with Sega reportedly value Rovio at a price 25% higher.
You might wonder whether Rovio is still worth $1 billion as we did. The company has been unable to come up with another franchise that captured the imagination of the smartphone owning public as Angry Birds did. But Sega might have a plan to capitalize on the Angry Birds name and perhaps this makes it worthwhile for Sega to spend $1 billion for Rovio. On the other hand last year Rovio said that all of its games combined had five billion downloads in total. At $1 billion, the deal would value each download at 20 cents. Perhaps looking at the deal this way makes more sense.
