I’m sure more than one person over the age of 30 will have read the news of Sega’s purchase of Rovio in disbelief, perhaps even with some irritation. “Why, instead of making a new Golden Axe, Sega is buying a Finnish studio whose main franchise no longer sells?”, “Where’s my new OutRun?”, “Will a new Shinobi opus not does not arrive ?” sell like hot cakes? Undoubtedly, certain variants of these questions and many others that it is even unimaginable for me to transcribe will have passed through different minds, and be careful, I will not pretend to be innocent, mine too. Product of this is that I started to investigate behind the scenes of this business operation, and the result I got surprised me. Here, then, I leave you some facts that led to the purchase of the Angry Birds studio by the company that owns Sonic and the reason why I think Sega made a good choice, not like with the 32X, but that’s another story .
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A not so big figure for Sega
We go to the numbers cold and often incomprehensible to us mortals saving up so we can buy a worthwhile triple-A starting point and ponder many, many, and maybe lose many intra-family negotiations that hurt others to remember . Sega has agreed to acquire Rovio for the sum of 776 million dollars, a figure that is hard to believe but considering that the Japanese video game giant has a market capitalization of 4.3 billionthe total amount is not that high.
Continuing with this line of thinking, the agreed value doubles Rovio’s annual revenue, at least as far as the reports indicate. reports referring to 2022but it is a trend already established in this type of commercial operations, it is enough just to look at the numbers from Activision-Blizzard and what Microsoft paid for it, In this way, one could say that the price is very much in consideration of industry standards at this level. It should also be noted that at the beginning of the year the Israeli giant Playtika, known on the world betting market, had offered to buy the company in a negotiation which ultimately did not succeed.
The reasons for a purchase, a real Finnish tango
It’s all very well with the numbers, but “why is Sega going to buy this company? It’s Sega, it doesn’t need anything else, it stole my heart from the time of the Master System and it never gave it back to me, I love you, Sega”. Yes finally, fanboyism Moreover, corporations have far less romantic realities and goals than those of us on the side of consumers and even journalism might imagine. In the case of Sega (like many others) all eyes are on the mobile market. Sega was eliminated in this area more than 140 games since the year 2009 with mixed success, but probably the only big name that comes to mind is Sonic Dash. Rovio, for its part, is synonymous with Angry Birds, a production that has achieved brilliant success and is part of a catalog of only 49 games.
The Finnish company knows the mobile phone market, was born and lived there from the start and knows how to exploit it. Currently, it has a very interesting independent development program which has produced two dozen games to date and the company is estimated to have generated over $20 million in revenue throughout its history.
Beyond profits, and something that sometimes remains in the background when it comes to talking, are franchises. We know that Sonic has appeared in a multitude of crossingsso we really could be up against a multiverse of odds, many of which, no doubt, will also include film and television projects, areas where both companies have been able to get their feet wet with some success.
And now, what do we do, Sega?
What does all of this mean for fans? It may still be too early to know for sure what we’ll find, but the good thing is that it’s more than likely that sagas that have a lot of traction today, like Like a Dragon, Persona, and a few others , have more presence on mobile devices in different forms and see many Rovio licensed products in console productions. Ultimately, anything that allows players to get varied, quality productions, and ideally both is always welcome. Congratulations Sega. Congratulations Rovia. I too am waiting for a new Golden Axe.
