Angry Birds has probably got to be one of the biggest names in mobile gaming at the moment. The developers, Rovio, have since released many variations of the game to tie-in with movies as well as other franchises, such as Star Wars, but overall each variation is essentially the same game with a different look and sometimes slightly different mechanics as well. To that end, former EA CEO, John Riccitiello, revealed during his speech at the Gaming Insiders Summit how he felt about game brands, and cited Angry Birds as an example.
According to Riccitiello, he felt that Rovio needed to innovate the Angry Birds game instead of releasing variations as well as stuffed toys. “Adding a Star Wars brand is not an innovation. It plays pretty much as it did. Maybe tomorrow they will do something so fundamentally innovative that they will prove me wrong, but they haven’t really mastered the microtransaction model. I wish they had put as much innovation and energy into the code as went into all the other stuff. Maybe they wanted to be Disney before they had done enough.” As it stands Rovio has recently announced Angry Birds Go!, a kart-racing game which is a departure from their previous games, but could that be looked at as innovation?
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