Angry Birds raise $42M?

This doesn't seem too crazy to me. I see three things here: the Angry Birds Games, the Angry Birds Brand, and Rovio.<p>I can't help but think that the brand itself has huge potential. Put this in the hands of Disney say, with movies, merchandise and licensing (McD Angry Birds Happy Meals) and the brand is probably worth at least a couple hundred millions. Not saying it's a given, they need to execute properly. Anyone remember Club Penguin (it's still around)...this seems way bigger than that.<p>This game is also well suited for the ultimate platform: game boy. That could be worth a little goldmine itself.<p>As for the developer, I have no clue, but I wouldn't bet against their next project.

Honestly I'm baffled as to why they need to raise funding. The game is still #2 &#38; #5 on the app store, so they've got to have pretty significant revenue coming in.<p>This feels like expanding just for the sake of expanding. They should focus on what they're good at, which is making games. It doesn't take a large company to develop games like angry birds.

By that logic, Microsoft should raise 50B from investors to bring their wildly successful MS Paint application to more platforms.

42M for the equivalent of a flash game? There's no bubble here, move along.

Sounds like founders taking cash off the table to me.

Not to say that this valuation indicates a bubble but I find it interesting to compare it to the Moorhuhn Game Series which was popular quite a few years ago. Seems to have been the equivalent of Angry Birds in the early 2000's.<p><i>Propelled by the game's popularity, its Bochum-based publisher Phenomedia AG, who had acquired Art Department, went public in late 1999 at the height of the dot-com bubble and attained a market value of up to one billion Euro.</i><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorhuhn" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorhuhn</a>

Wow, $42 million is a whopping huge Series A.<p>I'm actually surprised that Rovio is going this route. From what I read, it seems that game financing goes along a different route normally (taking the form more similar to a bond IIRC; anyone knowledgeable care to enlighten?).<p>Repeat success is any field like this is hard. There are only a handful of studios who have had sustained repeated success and that typically revolves around a successful franchise. For example:<p>- id Software (Quake/Doom);<p>- Epic Games (Unreal)<p>- Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto);<p>- Infinity Ward (Call of Duty).<p>One (admittedly huge) hit does not a franchise make, or at least not a <i>proven</i> franchise. It'll be interesting to see what Rovio does with this money, whether they try and (further) leverage the Angry Birds franchise and really what the future of mobile gaming is.<p>If you estimate that a Series A round will take a 25-40% stake in a company that puts a ballpark post-money valuation of $100-160 million, which is impressive.

They've already spunoff with Angry Birds Seasons. Given the success of that app, I think they can build more Angry Birds Topical apps like:<p>Angry Birds Transformers. Angry Birds Harry Potter. Angry Birds Cars. Angry Birds Kungfu Panda. Angry Birds Democrats!