Finland-based company Rovio Entertainment, the studio behind the massively successful Angry Birds franchise, is set to open a new studio in London to develop new games apart from Angry Birds.
Apparently, their main focus resides on multiplayer online games or MMOs. The main argument proposed by Rovio for focusing on MMOs is that they believe the best game experiences are those shared with other people. The new studio will seek to develop new and unique MMOs that are “creative, inclusive, and delightful.”
“Our business is profitably growing and London is the most logical place for us to found a new studio that will complement our overall global mix of internal and external developers,” stated Antti Viitanen in a statement on Rovio’s website.
Rovio seeks the future in mobile gaming
Rovio has lost momentum recently due to a reduction in profits coming from Angry Birds, even when the Angry Birds Movie was named by the company “the most successful Finnish movie of all time” and the second highest-grossing video game movie of all time.
The company was forced to cut jobs in 2014 and 2015, having to restructure their whole business model to keep themselves alive and relevant in today’s gaming market, which is more competitive and aggressive than ever.
The strategy is that MMO is perceived as an existing game mode in mobile systems, although it has not been fully exploited, which shows that there is room for larger companies to make their play. This does not mean that there are not successful MMO games from major firms, such as Blizzard’s Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, but there is certainly a gap that remains to be “saturated,” as Rovio officials suggest.
There also seems to be a trend of tech companies migrating to London, as Facebook, Google, and Apple all announced their intentions of building branches in the British capital.
The reason is that London still poses as a cultural and financial center that is relevant on a global scale. Distancing the UK from the European Union will allow businesses to thrive on and enjoy a rather new economy that calls for jobs, investment, and new assets so it can sustain the periods of financial uncertainty that will come after Brexit starts to roll out.
In the following months, London will change substantially as it will be injected with potential for growth, seeing that since the moment Brexit passed very few people in the UK knew what was going to happen, and up to this point there is political resistance for implementing the ruling that resulted from the referendum.
“London is the most logical place for us to found a new studio that will complement our overall global mix of internal and external developers. London is also a fantastically diverse talent magnet that has already paid Rovio dividends, as our local consumer products team that is based there has shown,” stated Viitanen.
Source: Rovio