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7M Downloads: Why Angry Birds Is Free on Android

62 points by vamsee 16y ago

DannoHung 16y ago
This is neither here nor there, but I'm wondering if anyone else has an opinion on this: Does anyone find the physics in Angry Birds INCREDIBLY frustrating? There seems to be very little rhyme or reason to the way momentum is transferred. And the material modeling just makes me want to bite my tongue off.
- syaz1 16y ago
  Just you. Get a real game on real device if you want real physics and graphics.
- irons 16y ago
  I've heard this complaint before, and it puzzles me. Figuring out the odd physical rules (to manipulate them) is almost the entirety of the game. If you don't enjoy the physics, then you don't enjoy the game, but blaming the physics for your non-enjoyment is like criticizing Pac-Man because you die when you run into a ghost.
  - DannoHung 16y ago
    I don't believe that this is intrinsically correct. Part of what makes I feel makes a game good or not is if the rules are consistent and can be extrapolated. If every action is a special case, the game is frustrating to any player trying to build a mental model of the cause and effect relationships within the world. Now on the other hand, the premise of a game and it's basic interactions may be enjoyable, or at least conceptually enjoyable, by themselves. There need not be the call for the player to accept the gestalt as it is. Personally, I'd like to see an Angry Birds clone that made it a little easier to understand what's going to happen when you launch a game object in a particular way.
    - irons 16y ago
      Inconsistency can certainly break a game, but where's the inconsistency in Angry Birds? I've got three stars on every level through the first ten worlds, and only a couple of levels seemed to require lucky breaks for maximum points. 3-1 was the one time I gave up and found the three-star solution on youtube.
gregpilling 16y ago
I have the game on my android phone and like it, so I put it on my wife's new ipod touch. I am amazed at how much better the graphics and gameplay seem to be on her ipod. The graphics seem much more detailed, and the controls seem more responsive.
- CountSessine 16y ago
  Byte code vs native code? I have a hard time believing that anyone would make an Android game without the NDK (without which you're basically CPU starved - Android isn't the platform for heavy CPU work), but maybe Angry Birds is Dalvik-only?
  - mdaniel 16y ago
    I have it on good authority[1] that Angry Birds is a native-inclusive app. Also, I wouldn't look down my nose at Dalvik-only apps. The JIT (which, AFAIK, is the target of the litigation) gets pretty close to optimal code the longer it runs - and theoretically games run the same code a lot more than your average application. In fact, my EUR0.02 is that native-inclusive apps (just like any Java apps which rely on native libraries) are worse, in my opinion, because it limits the number of platforms that one can execute the apps upon. And as a huge Linux fan, current Mac user, and user of x64 Windows at work, I can assure you that I get left out in the cold a LOT. It's one level of bad to tie your app only to Windows, which coincidentally includes 90% (last metric I heard) of the world. It's another thing entirely to say, "oh, sorry, your Android isn't the same as my Android: too bad for you." 1 = unzip -l AngryBirds_1.3.5.apk|grep -i \\.so
    - CountSessine 16y ago
      Also, I wouldn't look down my nose at Dalvik-only apps. The JIT (which, AFAIK, is the target of the litigation) gets pretty close to optimal code the longer it runs - and theoretically games run the same code a lot more than your average application That's interesting - are you sure about that? There's a big difference between a static translation JIT and the more modern and memory-intensive progressively-optimizing JIT's that are used outside mobile. My understanding was that Dalvik's JIT was a one-time-only translater. Its difficult to find any comprehensive benchmarks of the 2.2 JIT - there are plenty of benchmarks showing the 2.1 interpreter eating CPU cycles compared to native code (think 20-to-1), and Google themselves claimed that the 2.2 JIT would mean a 2-5x improvement in CPU efficiency, but I'm still waiting for a set of comprehensive cross-platform benchmarks.
dpcan 16y ago
I'd love to know how many active installs there are of those 7M downloads. I must have downloaded it 3 times to my devices and it didn't successfully run on any of them. We have an app with over 1.2M downloads and around 500k active installs. I think the active install rate is low because it is a LITE version. Only - I haven't put ads on the game yet, and have been wondering whether it's worth it or not. If it only makes a little per day, then I'd rather just leave my free users alone and stick with the paid upgrade. I'd also like to know what kind of revenue they are making from ads on Android. I feel like if we made our game completely free, we'd reach over 2-3M downloads pretty quickly and triple our active install rate, and if that meant we were making as much in ads as paid downloads, then I think we'd consider going that direction. It's just too big of a maybe, and we can't seem to get any inside info about ad revenues to make the leap - even when emailing Mobclix and Admob, we get no response to this question. Worst of all - I wonder if we are leaving money on the table by not being an ad supported app. Ho hum.
- willheim 16y ago
  You raise the single greatest most valid point yet! It's not about those who download it and try it. It's about stickiness. Now, Angry Birds apparently has its fans (I'm not one just because I find the whole genre bland) but I know from experience that I'll down lite versions on my iPhone, often ad supported, try them out, and maybe purchase 5% of them as full, ad-free versions. The rest get dumped off the phone. Same goes with XBLA (Xbox) games. I've downed many trials but purchased only 1. It's all about live installs... not just downloads.
- J3L2404 16y ago
  If you change from completely free to free w/ads you will incur quite a bit of wrath in the reviews, at least with current users.
  - dpcan 16y ago
    The free version is VERY limited however. So, going from 10% of a game to 100% would hopefully sway the reviews my way even with ads, but still - hard to say. I could start slow, with just ads on the home screen, then maybe put them throughout.
eli 16y ago
I don't get why there isn't a version I can pay for to get rid of the ads. They're annoying.
- bryne 16y ago
  Because it'd be pirated ad infinitum and the game presumably makes more money on the Marketplace with the ads included, no?
davidedicillo 16y ago
Something the article doesn't keep in consideration is the fact that Angry Birds is so famous that most likely those people on Android who downloaded it have seen their iPhone friends playing it and praising it for months...
cletus 16y ago
Personally I view this as bad news for the Android ecosystem. The iOS/iTunes ecosystem is incredibly accessible. You don't need a credit card (important for minors; a huge market). You can buy credit everywhere. iOS users seem willing to part with cash. Google Checkout on the other hand is not available everywhere Android is. People seem less willing to use it (eg 50k paid from this post). You can't buy credit in the retail chain. Google gives developers 95%. The last one is actually a huge problem. Google's 5% will never pay for retail distribution (Apple's 30% clearly does). Developers have come to the obvious conclusion: they'd rather have 70% of (potentially) a lot rather than 95% of much less. iOS has the option of paid and ad-supported. Android only having ad-supported (realistically) is a major disadvantage. The only way Abgry Birds could make it to Android is on the back of the success of iOS. I wonder how much money their experiment is really making.
- yequalsx 16y ago
  The problem with Google Checkout compared to PayPal is that only people with a Checkout account can buy from places that require Checkout. It's not the job of a vendor to get their customers to sign up with Checkout. It's hard enough to get the to agree to buy something. That extra hurdle is just too much.
  - teilo 16y ago
    When you buy from Apple, you buy using Apple's checkout process. Why ever would anyone think that Android would use anything but Google's checkout process?
    - Xuzz 16y ago
      Because Android is the "open" system, and Apple is the "closed" one?
    - yequalsx 16y ago
      You're right but there is a subtle difference. iPads and iPods require the use of iTunes which pretty much requires an account. You have to do this in order to use the devices. Apple pretty much has a system that once you are using their devices you've got an account. So when a user is searching for apps they've already got an account. There is no extra hurdle at that stage.
SoftwareMaven 16y ago
This seems to say really bad things for the Android marketplace. If a game as good and popular as Angry Birds can't survive if charged for, it doesn't seem like a good place for developers. Ad supported doesn't work unless you can get to millions of downloads.
shib71 16y ago
Rovo could easily release a paid version without ads. It's practically ancient tradition on the iPhone, which everyone is arguing is completely different to the Android market. I just assumed that Rovo must be making more money from ads than they ever could from sales. In what order did Rovo release versions for alternate platforms? I would be interested in knowing whether there was a point where they started preferring ad-support.
mikek 16y ago
"Because it makes more money that way" is the short answer. While this explains why they have a free version, it doesn't explain why they don't have a paid version as well. There are plenty of people who would pay $.99 to remove ads. Piracy is the only explanation for this that comes to mind.
pasiaj 16y ago
I think Rovio is putting all their weight into turning Angry Birds into a global brand. The mobile app market is still pretty limited. Getting beyond $10 million revenue over all is incredible but nobody has any experience on sustaining success in the mobile market in the long run. Investing in the brand, on the other had, gives Rovio a lot more options - licensing deals, a movie deal or whatever. It is a tried and tested model. If Rovio got 7 million extra fans and alot of free media coverage by releasing it for free on Android, that in itself might be a better deal than a half a million in revenue from sales, even if you don't count the advertising revenue.
dhughes 16y ago
Still stuck on 7/11 :(
pilif 16y ago
From an UI perspective I really hate the ads in angry birds on android: the advertised products are never interesting and the ad is placed in a way that it can be accidentally tapped during gameplay (happened to me multiple times). I would GLADLY pay to get the ads to go away. Maybe they should add a premium, ad-free, version
- epo 16y ago
  And as lots of people have already pointed out, an ad-free version would be pirated instantly. This way they make some money out of the Android user base. Personally I suspect that once the hive mind gets to work even ads will stop working and Android will simply not have any commercial-grade software whatsoever.
Indyan 16y ago
Developer of Angry Birds: “Really Big and New Project Underway” http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/angry-birds-new-project.html http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/angry-birds-new-project.h...

62 points by vamsee 16y ago

This is neither here nor there, but I'm wondering if anyone else has an opinion on this: Does anyone find the physics in Angry Birds INCREDIBLY frustrating? There seems to be very little rhyme or reason to the way momentum is transferred. And the material modeling just makes me want to bite my tongue off.

syaz1 16y ago
Just you. Get a real game on real device if you want real physics and graphics.
irons 16y ago
I've heard this complaint before, and it puzzles me. Figuring out the odd physical rules (to manipulate them) is almost the entirety of the game. If you don't enjoy the physics, then you don't enjoy the game, but blaming the physics for your non-enjoyment is like criticizing Pac-Man because you die when you run into a ghost.
- DannoHung 16y ago
  I don't believe that this is intrinsically correct. Part of what makes I feel makes a game good or not is if the rules are consistent and can be extrapolated. If every action is a special case, the game is frustrating to any player trying to build a mental model of the cause and effect relationships within the world. Now on the other hand, the premise of a game and it's basic interactions may be enjoyable, or at least conceptually enjoyable, by themselves. There need not be the call for the player to accept the gestalt as it is. Personally, I'd like to see an Angry Birds clone that made it a little easier to understand what's going to happen when you launch a game object in a particular way.
  - irons 16y ago
    Inconsistency can certainly break a game, but where's the inconsistency in Angry Birds? I've got three stars on every level through the first ten worlds, and only a couple of levels seemed to require lucky breaks for maximum points. 3-1 was the one time I gave up and found the three-star solution on youtube.

gregpilling 16y ago

I have the game on my android phone and like it, so I put it on my wife's new ipod touch. I am amazed at how much better the graphics and gameplay seem to be on her ipod. The graphics seem much more detailed, and the controls seem more responsive.

CountSessine 16y ago
Byte code vs native code? I have a hard time believing that anyone would make an Android game without the NDK (without which you're basically CPU starved - Android isn't the platform for heavy CPU work), but maybe Angry Birds is Dalvik-only?
- mdaniel 16y ago
  I have it on good authority[1] that Angry Birds is a native-inclusive app. Also, I wouldn't look down my nose at Dalvik-only apps. The JIT (which, AFAIK, is the target of the litigation) gets pretty close to optimal code the longer it runs - and theoretically games run the same code a lot more than your average application. In fact, my EUR0.02 is that native-inclusive apps (just like any Java apps which rely on native libraries) are worse, in my opinion, because it limits the number of platforms that one can execute the apps upon. And as a huge Linux fan, current Mac user, and user of x64 Windows at work, I can assure you that I get left out in the cold a LOT. It's one level of bad to tie your app only to Windows, which coincidentally includes 90% (last metric I heard) of the world. It's another thing entirely to say, "oh, sorry, your Android isn't the same as my Android: too bad for you." 1 = unzip -l AngryBirds_1.3.5.apk|grep -i \\.so
  - CountSessine 16y ago
    Also, I wouldn't look down my nose at Dalvik-only apps. The JIT (which, AFAIK, is the target of the litigation) gets pretty close to optimal code the longer it runs - and theoretically games run the same code a lot more than your average application That's interesting - are you sure about that? There's a big difference between a static translation JIT and the more modern and memory-intensive progressively-optimizing JIT's that are used outside mobile. My understanding was that Dalvik's JIT was a one-time-only translater. Its difficult to find any comprehensive benchmarks of the 2.2 JIT - there are plenty of benchmarks showing the 2.1 interpreter eating CPU cycles compared to native code (think 20-to-1), and Google themselves claimed that the 2.2 JIT would mean a 2-5x improvement in CPU efficiency, but I'm still waiting for a set of comprehensive cross-platform benchmarks.

dpcan 16y ago

I'd love to know how many active installs there are of those 7M downloads. I must have downloaded it 3 times to my devices and it didn't successfully run on any of them. We have an app with over 1.2M downloads and around 500k active installs. I think the active install rate is low because it is a LITE version. Only - I haven't put ads on the game yet, and have been wondering whether it's worth it or not. If it only makes a little per day, then I'd rather just leave my free users alone and stick with the paid upgrade. I'd also like to know what kind of revenue they are making from ads on Android. I feel like if we made our game completely free, we'd reach over 2-3M downloads pretty quickly and triple our active install rate, and if that meant we were making as much in ads as paid downloads, then I think we'd consider going that direction. It's just too big of a maybe, and we can't seem to get any inside info about ad revenues to make the leap - even when emailing Mobclix and Admob, we get no response to this question. Worst of all - I wonder if we are leaving money on the table by not being an ad supported app. Ho hum.

willheim 16y ago
You raise the single greatest most valid point yet! It's not about those who download it and try it. It's about stickiness. Now, Angry Birds apparently has its fans (I'm not one just because I find the whole genre bland) but I know from experience that I'll down lite versions on my iPhone, often ad supported, try them out, and maybe purchase 5% of them as full, ad-free versions. The rest get dumped off the phone. Same goes with XBLA (Xbox) games. I've downed many trials but purchased only 1. It's all about live installs... not just downloads.
J3L2404 16y ago
If you change from completely free to free w/ads you will incur quite a bit of wrath in the reviews, at least with current users.
- dpcan 16y ago
  The free version is VERY limited however. So, going from 10% of a game to 100% would hopefully sway the reviews my way even with ads, but still - hard to say. I could start slow, with just ads on the home screen, then maybe put them throughout.

eli 16y ago

I don't get why there isn't a version I can pay for to get rid of the ads. They're annoying.

bryne 16y ago
Because it'd be pirated ad infinitum and the game presumably makes more money on the Marketplace with the ads included, no?

davidedicillo 16y ago

Something the article doesn't keep in consideration is the fact that Angry Birds is so famous that most likely those people on Android who downloaded it have seen their iPhone friends playing it and praising it for months...

cletus 16y ago

Personally I view this as bad news for the Android ecosystem. The iOS/iTunes ecosystem is incredibly accessible. You don't need a credit card (important for minors; a huge market). You can buy credit everywhere. iOS users seem willing to part with cash. Google Checkout on the other hand is not available everywhere Android is. People seem less willing to use it (eg 50k paid from this post). You can't buy credit in the retail chain. Google gives developers 95%. The last one is actually a huge problem. Google's 5% will never pay for retail distribution (Apple's 30% clearly does). Developers have come to the obvious conclusion: they'd rather have 70% of (potentially) a lot rather than 95% of much less. iOS has the option of paid and ad-supported. Android only having ad-supported (realistically) is a major disadvantage. The only way Abgry Birds could make it to Android is on the back of the success of iOS. I wonder how much money their experiment is really making.

yequalsx 16y ago
The problem with Google Checkout compared to PayPal is that only people with a Checkout account can buy from places that require Checkout. It's not the job of a vendor to get their customers to sign up with Checkout. It's hard enough to get the to agree to buy something. That extra hurdle is just too much.
- teilo 16y ago
  When you buy from Apple, you buy using Apple's checkout process. Why ever would anyone think that Android would use anything but Google's checkout process?
  - Xuzz 16y ago
    Because Android is the "open" system, and Apple is the "closed" one?
  - yequalsx 16y ago
    You're right but there is a subtle difference. iPads and iPods require the use of iTunes which pretty much requires an account. You have to do this in order to use the devices. Apple pretty much has a system that once you are using their devices you've got an account. So when a user is searching for apps they've already got an account. There is no extra hurdle at that stage.

SoftwareMaven 16y ago

This seems to say really bad things for the Android marketplace. If a game as good and popular as Angry Birds can't survive if charged for, it doesn't seem like a good place for developers. Ad supported doesn't work unless you can get to millions of downloads.

shib71 16y ago

Rovo could easily release a paid version without ads. It's practically ancient tradition on the iPhone, which everyone is arguing is completely different to the Android market. I just assumed that Rovo must be making more money from ads than they ever could from sales. In what order did Rovo release versions for alternate platforms? I would be interested in knowing whether there was a point where they started preferring ad-support.

mikek 16y ago

"Because it makes more money that way" is the short answer. While this explains why they have a free version, it doesn't explain why they don't have a paid version as well. There are plenty of people who would pay $.99 to remove ads. Piracy is the only explanation for this that comes to mind.

pasiaj 16y ago

I think Rovio is putting all their weight into turning Angry Birds into a global brand. The mobile app market is still pretty limited. Getting beyond $10 million revenue over all is incredible but nobody has any experience on sustaining success in the mobile market in the long run. Investing in the brand, on the other had, gives Rovio a lot more options - licensing deals, a movie deal or whatever. It is a tried and tested model. If Rovio got 7 million extra fans and alot of free media coverage by releasing it for free on Android, that in itself might be a better deal than a half a million in revenue from sales, even if you don't count the advertising revenue.

dhughes 16y ago

Still stuck on 7/11 :(

pilif 16y ago

From an UI perspective I really hate the ads in angry birds on android: the advertised products are never interesting and the ad is placed in a way that it can be accidentally tapped during gameplay (happened to me multiple times). I would GLADLY pay to get the ads to go away. Maybe they should add a premium, ad-free, version

epo 16y ago
And as lots of people have already pointed out, an ad-free version would be pirated instantly. This way they make some money out of the Android user base. Personally I suspect that once the hive mind gets to work even ads will stop working and Android will simply not have any commercial-grade software whatsoever.

Indyan 16y ago

Developer of Angry Birds: “Really Big and New Project Underway” http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/angry-birds-new-project.html http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/angry-birds-new-project.h...