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With Rovio making at least $10 million a month from plushes and t-shirts, a survey finds 53% of users are playing free versions

Monetising with merch

With Rovio making at least $10 million a month from plushes and t-shirts, a survey finds 53% of users are playing free versions
At the last count, over 1 million Angry Birds games are now being downloaded across various gaming platforms on a daily basis.

It's no surprise then that the franchise has jumped from 300 million downloads in early August to 350 million 43 days later.

What's more significant, especially for Rovio's bottomline, however, is it's now selling 1 million t-shirts and 1 million plush toys every month, at least that's according to new North American general manager Andrew Stalbow.

Given that the t-shirts retail for $10 to $20, while the plushes go for $9 to $20, assuming a 50 percent share with retailer, that's at least $10 million a month for Rovio; likely a low estimate.

Half and half

As for the wider phenomenon, market research outfit AYTM has been surveying Angry Birds players, albeit in a small, self-selected manner.

It reckons 18-24 year olds are 33 percent likely to buy Angry Birds games than people who are 25 or older, while male gamers are 35 percent more likely than women to upgrade from a free Lite version of the games to paid versions.

Still, of the 500 US adults aged 18+ who were surveyed and had downloaded at least one Angry Birds game, 53 percent were playing free versions, not even spending 99c to get a full version.

Distribution per device was split 41 percent Android, 33 percent iPod touch, 32 percent iPhone, 25 percent PC, 15 percent iPad and 6 percent other (Ovi, webOS, etc).

As for the games' impact on people, 13 percent said they felt addicted when playing, and 12 percent of people who had played Angry Birds more than 25 times had deleted it for that reason

You can see the full infographic from AYTM here.

[source: TechCrunch]
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.