《愤怒的小鸟》是iOS和Android平台的游戏冠军，但在Facebook平台还能复制这种成功模式吗？

在最近的媒体采访中，芬兰开发商Rovio董事长Peter Vesterbacka强调，公司的正在认真考虑将该游戏投放到Facebook平台，现已进入该游戏Facebook版本的开发过程，预计将于今年5月登陆Facebook，它是公司目前最大的内部开发项目之一。

peter-vesterbacka

游戏邦获悉，这个Facebook版本游戏将添加社交及病毒式传播机制，同时还可能扩展虚拟商品种类。《愤怒的小鸟》原来已提供“通关神鹰”（Mighty Eagle）这种虚拟商品，支持用户突破障碍顺利闯关。但Vesterbacka现在还没有透露这款新游戏具体有何不同，仅表示将于4月中旬进行测试。

与从社交领域进军手机游戏市场一样，要将手机游戏移植到社交平台也同样困难重重。在这方面最为成功的典型是PopCap Games旗下的《宝石迷阵闪电战》，此外Bolt Creative工作室也在尝试将《口袋上帝》移植到社交平台，而Glu Mobile也已在今年初将它的热门动作类游戏《Gun Bros.》引进了Facebook。

Vesterbacka表示，“你不能将某一个环境或生态系统中的游戏体验，生搬硬套到另一个平台，就好像Zynga也不会直接将《FarmVille》投放到手机平台。在手机平台上大获成功的作品，往往是那些根据这一平台特点而专门设计的游戏。”

从长期来看，Rovio将会与其他游戏开发商一样，加入HTML5游戏开发的阵营。另外游戏邦还得知一个有趣的消息，据Vesterbacka所称，《愤怒的小鸟》Android版本现在的收益已经堪比iOS版本。

打造游戏产业链

Rovio计划将最近通过Atomico Ventures、Accel Partners和Felicis Ventures融资的4200万美元，用于强化《愤怒的小鸟》的品牌影响力，扩展新游戏、电影、书籍和毛绒玩具（游戏邦注：据称该产品已售出200万件）等一系列项目。除此之外，Rovio还在开发该游戏的PC版本，以及Xbox和PS3掌机版本，前不久还与英特尔达成协议，将该游戏投放到了后者的上网本平台。

据Vesterbacka所称，Rovio与Accel共同合作的一个优势在于，后者与娱乐产业颇有渊源。Accel的合作人Jim Breyer也是Facebook董事会的成员，他曾见证漫画巨头Marvel通过迪士尼收购交易而获得快速发展的过程。

Vesterbacka表示，“我们关注各种类型的娱乐项目，并不只是把自己当成一家游戏公司来看，这就好像苹果摆脱‘电脑’这个代号一样。”

游戏邦认为Rovio可能会利用这笔资金进行收购，但不一定会局限于游戏领域，该团队有可能推动《愤怒的小鸟》向多种类型的娱乐产业发展。

即使Rovio并不打算推出拥有自主知识产权的新作品，他们也还有其他延伸《愤怒的小鸟》项目的途径，比如从小猪角度出发推出新游戏，“就像‘马里奥’一样，他开着车子驶向太空，于是就催生出了《Super Mario Galaxy》这款新游戏。”

全面突破的发展战略

Rovio团队现在正推出一系列虚拟商品以及应用内置计费产品。

现在已经问世的产品包括该公司在上周GDC大会上发布的“通关神鹰SDK”，它是“通关神鹰”虚拟商品的项目延伸，目前已经有40%的iOS用户购买这种虚拟商品。

第三方开发商可以通过“通关神鹰SDK”在自己的游戏中，向用户提供“通关神鹰”让他们打清闯关障碍。在Remedy新版本的iOS游戏《Death Rally》中，玩家将可付费购买“通关神鹰”用以杀死对手。如果他们在《愤怒的小鸟》中也购买了这种功能，还能获得更大的威力。Vesterbacka认为，其他游戏渠道可以帮助他们进一步推广‘通关神鹰’。

该公司还在去年宣布面向开发商推出Bad Piggy Bank应用内置计费系统，虽然该服务不可用于官方版本的Android Marketplace，但可以在亚马逊Android应用商店或独立应用商店GetJar中使用，游戏邦获悉GetJar也是Accel Partners的投资项目之一。

Rovio还计划在这款游戏中植入Facebook Connect和苹果ID等登录服务，有可能为开发商开放一个内部积分排行榜系统，这项服务也许会成为OpenFeint和Scoreloop等手机社交游戏平台的潜在竞争对手。

Bing Pigs

在市场营销及广告赞助方面，Rovio或许会每年开展四五个高广告推广活动，该公司最近与微软Bing进行合作，制作了四个动画广告短片，扩展了原版本故事内容：广告中的小猪正使用Bing搜索引擎查找并窃取鸟蛋。

Vesterbacka称《愤怒的小鸟》不会是一个仅限于儿童用户的品牌，“我们有一个全面发展策略，即锁定男人、女人、男孩和女孩这四个群体。我们希望争取2岁至99岁的所有用户群体。”

锁定中国市场

对Rovio来说，中国是仅次于美国的第二大市场，尽管该公司有一半以上的收益来自美国，但中国现在的市场潜力也让他们无法忽视。

他们计划将《愤怒的小鸟》投放到包括腾讯和人人网在内的所有中国大型社交平台。目前为止，中国市场最主要的营收渠道是付费下载和广告赞助，这一地区最受欢迎的手机平台是Android和诺基亚。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Rovio Has Been Working On The Facebook Version of Angry Birds For A Year

Angry Birds has toppled competitors on the iOS and Android leaderboards. But can it do the same on Facebook?

In an interview, Peter Vesterbacka, from the game’s maker Rovio, stressed that the company is taking a very deliberate approach with bringing its smash hit to the Facebook platform. It’s been working on the game, which is set to launch in May, for about a year and it’s one of the largest internal projects in the company.

The title will have new social and viral mechanics and likely extend the company’s experiments with virtual goods. Angry Birds currently offers a Mighty Eagle virtual good, which users can pay for to pass challenging levels in the game. He wouldn’t reveal exactly how the game will be different, but it will be in beta in mid-April.

Like many social gaming companies who have tried to move from the Facebook platform to mobile, going in the reverse direction is also challenging. Popcap Games has been the one exceptional success with Bejeweled Blitz, although others like Bolt Creative have tried with titles like Pocket God. Glu Mobile is a more recent entrant; it brought its popular action title Gun Bros to Facebook earlier this year.

“You can’t take an experience that works in one environment and one ecosystem and force-feed it onto another,” he said. “It’s like Zynga. They can’t just take Farmville and throw it on mobile and see what sticks. The titles that have been successful for them on mobile are the ones they’ve built from the ground up for the platform.”

In the long-run, Rovio, will be move to HTML5 like other game developers. Interestingly enough though, Vesterbacka said Angry Birds is now making as much money from Android as it is from iOS. (You can read more about that here.)

Extending The Franchise

With its recent $42 million round of funding from Atomico Ventures, Accel Partners and Felicis Ventures, Rovio plans on deepening the Angry Birds franchise with everything from new games to movies,

books and plush toys (of which 2 million have been sold). They’re also building PC and console versions of the game for Xbox and PS3; they recently completed a deal for Intel to bring Angry Birds to its netbooks.

One of the reasons Accel was appealing as a partner, Vesterbacka said, was its ties to the entertainment industry. Accel’s Jim Breyer, who also sits on Facebook’s board, saw comic book giant Marvel through its acquisition by Disney.

“We’re looking at every type of entertainment,” Vesterbacka said. ”We don’t view ourselves as a gaming company. It’s like how Apple dropped ‘Computer’ from its name.”

The company may use of some its funding for acquisitions, but they might not be in the gaming space. They might be targeted more at helping Angry Birds cross over into other forms or entertainment.

Even if Rovio doesn’t create entirely new intellectual property, there are plenty of ways to extend the Angry Birds universe, including, for example, games from the pigs’ perspective.

“It’s like Mario. He drove a car into space and that became Super Mario Galaxy,” he said.

Making A Platform Play

They’re also embarking on significant platform play with a series of virtual goods, identity and in-app payments products.

Already there is a Mighty Eagle SDK, which the company launched at GDC last week. It’s an extension of the Mighty Eagle virtual good, which about 40 percent of new players pay for on iOS, Vesterbacka said.

Third-party game developers can also offer the Mighty Eagle virtual good in their games to gives users hints or help them pass challenges. In Remedy’s remake of Death Rally for iOS, players will be able to pay to have the Mighty Eagle swoop in and kill off an opponent. If the player has also bought the Mighty Eagle in Angry Birds, it will have even stronger powers.

“Other games will help us promote the Mighty Eagle on our behalf. It’s a bit of a game changer for us and more of a platform play,” Vesterbacka said.

The company also announced an in-app payments solutions for developers last year called Bad Piggy Bank. With Google set to launch its own in-app payments system, Bad Piggy Bank won’t work in the officially sanctioned Android Marketplace. But it will in others, like Amazon’s forthcoming Android store or independent app store Getjar, which shares an investor with Rovio in Accel Partners.

There are also plans to build a federated identity or gaming log-in that would tie in Facebook Connect and Apple ID. They would also open up any kind of internal leaderboard system they build to third-party developers, which would make them a competitor to mobile gaming networks like OpenFeint and Scoreloop.

In terms of marketing and advertising, Rovio will probably do four to five premium brand advertising deals a year. They recently did one with Microsoft’s Bing where they created four animated shorts that extended the storyline: the pigs used the search engine to look for and steal the birds’ eggs.

Vesterbacka said the company doesn’t want to pigeonhole the brand to just children. “We’re going after a four quadrant strategy, meaning we want to reach men, women, boys and girls. We want to be for everyone from 2 to 99-years-old,” he said.

Focusing on China

Rovio is also focused on expanding in China, the company’s second largest market after the U.S. While the U.S. accounts for more than half of the company’s revenues, China has just recently emerged as a significant market.

They plan on bringing Angry Birds to all the big social gaming platforms there including Tencent and RenRen. For now, the monetization strategy there is still similar with paid downloads and advertising. Their most popular mobile platforms there are Android and Nokia.（source:insidemobileapps）