After just a year of being in charge at Rovio Entertainment Ltd., the makers of Angry Birds, Chief Executive Pekka Rantala, decided to leave the company, after failing to refresh the company’s line-up, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Rovio failed to replicate the success of the first Angry Birds
It seems that one of the main reason behind this is the fact that the company’s constant struggle to boost revenue didn’t brought the desired results, in a hard-to-predict consumer marketplace. After the success of the first Angry Birds game, the company expanded its portfolio, constantly adding new revenue streams, including from licensing. Also, an Angry Birds movie should also be released in 2016.
Despite this diversification, consumers stopped paying for games and in-game purchases, which results in a personnel cut back in August, as an attempt to refocus on fewer businesses.
As for Pekka Rantala, a former executive at Nokia, said he was leaving the company that made Angry Birds into a phenomenon after successfully improving the company’s focus.
Mr. Rantala is still optimist regarding Rovio’s future
“The time was right to step aside “now that we have sharpened our focus and set the table for an exciting 2016,” Mr. Rantala said in a statement from Rovio.
After the departure of Mr. Rantala, the company will be led by Kari Levoranta, currently Rovio’s chief legal officer, as stated by The Wall Street Journal.
Also, former CEO and co-founder Mikael Hed, the son of Rovio’s current chairman, will be in charge with the company’s media business, including licensing. Mr. Hed put Pekka Rantala in charge when Rovio was trying to improve its revenue model, focusing on online and mobile gaming. Besides this, one of his biggest responsibilities was to make Rovio less dependent on the Angry Birds franchise, but it just struggled to repeat the success of the first game.
