Angry Birds may have taken the mobile games scene - and indeed the world - by storm but in time, it will all be seen as a fad, reckons Henk Rogers, the man who brokered Nintendo's orginal licence and is now managing director of The Tetris Company.

Speaking in an interview with IndustryGamers, Rogers compared his own Tetris franchise to a sport, saying that it'll endure much longer than Rovio's brand.

Marathon mode

"Again I like to compare it [Tetris] to a sport, in the beginning it's an activity, like golf was an activity, then it became a sport," he says.

"I think once people have played it more than 20 or 25 years you can say it's here to stay, it's a sport, it's no longer a fad. Angry Birds is cute and everybody plays it for a while but they get burned out and move on and they will play another game," he continued.

"But Tetris is like Happy Birthday, it keeps on going. Everybody else has games that come and go, they make the hit parade, but these are all temporary.

"You have to work really hard to get your unknown game to be number one, but when we re-released Tetris it became number one even though we didn't do any marketing. We have an unfair advantage, I gotta say.

"I'd rather have the goose that lays the golden egg," he concluded.

[source: IndustryGamers]