EA takes Angry Birds publisher under its wing Electronic Arts has purchased Angry Birds publisher Chillingo, thus buying up a significant part of the mobile gaming industry. Reuters puts the price of Chillingo just shy of $20m, though neither company is prepared to provide details. As well as Angry Birds, which was developed by Rovio, Chillingo owns the distribution …
This is the error a lot of people make - i.e. that the App Store, or direct music/ebook sales - mean that there is no room for publishers / labels / etc.
The mistake is to think their role was something to do with manufacturing and distributing goods, when in reality most of it is sales and marketing - and that counts a lot in a store with 200,000 apps.
The publisher behind Angry Birds have proven they can - yes, it's a good product, but there are plenty more good games that have flopper, because the developers didn't know how to sell, and didn't see the need to employ someone who does.
I make rather than sell software myself, and like most people resent the fact that salesmen make far more than the people who do the real work - but there's no getting away from the fact that someone has to do the sales job.
That said - I hate EA as much as everyone else here. They'd never have picked up or commissioned an Angry Birds in the first place (their mobile efforts so far being ports of console titles rather than original titles).
"Ugh. Angry Birds IP is still owned and developed by Rovio in Finland. Nothing has changed. The published bought by EA only publishes the iOS version. All others are self published!"
No offence, but it's pretty naive to assume that EA will let Rovio run free with such a desirable IP.
It'll start with strict release timetables and end with day-one patches...
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