263 million active Angry Birds members played the game last month

For those who think that Angry Birds was an overnight success for Rovio, guess again. The game was the 52nd try on the iOS platform for the game developer which struck gold with this franchise game. During December, 263 million active players took aim at the porkers with 30 million downloads the week of Christmas. On Christmas Day alone, there were 8 million downloads of Angry Birds. The monthly figure was a 30% increase over the 200 million active players for the games back in December 2011.

We've often mentioned that Rovio has lofty goals and that it aims to be the next Disney. One thing that Rovio has been extremely successful at is the marketing of Angry Birds. The images of the foul fowl can be seen on everything from lunch pails to board games to garments. The money that rolls in from these deals is incremental and Rovio doesn't have to lift a finger to earn it. All they need to do is to keep the game relevant, which they have and then some with the latest release, Angry Birds Star Wars.

Rovio's chief marketing officer Peter Vesterbacka says that he is aiming for 1 billion active users a day. To show you what that would mean, 1 billion people on the planet consume a Coca-Cola product daily, and that company has been around for over 100 years. With China now Rovio's largest market by daily active users, Rovio has a chance to rake in billions.

Eventually, Angry Birds will be have to be replaced by another big hit, and that is where you separate the one-hit wonders with the perennial money makers. All we can do is remind Rovio what happened with Zynga and Draw Something. The former purchased OMGPOP last March for $180 million in an attempt to catch the strong momentum behind Draw Something. But no sooner had the deal closed then players, feeling that the game had quickly gone stale, started uninstalling it and Zynga eventually needed a last minute restructuring to survive.

source: TechCrunch