If almost half your users are paying to take advantage of a feature you have introduced, your product is by all means great. In the GDC Summit, Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio, aka the Mighty Eagle revealed that almost 40% of new Angry Birds users are paying to take advantage of the Mighty Eagle. The in app purchase enables users to skip a level just in case it proves way too difficult for them.
The Mighty Eagle feature is available on the iPhone already, but it has been in the making for quite some time for the Android and we had been on the story with our interview Fortumo’s CEO, the Mighty Eagle himself and coverage of all such news recently. But Rovio’s success has been phenomenal and I guess addiction of users would be the perfect justification for the product’s success. Addiction enough to have them pay to clear a level or two.
Users are charged 99 cents for the in app purchase of the Mighty Eagle. The feature is marketed to the new users before they actually purchase the app itself. The reason being that existing users already had the version of the Angry Birds without the new in app feature.
Just to conclude, Angry Birds is not simply about mobile gaming any more, we have seen their board game and the Angry Birds Rio -game based on the Rio -movie. I bet there is more to come in the current year.
