Rovio’s rebuild means refocusing on Angry Birds, Sonic and picking new projects carefully

 

Alexandre Pelletier-Normand was appointed Sega West Studios COO in July, on top of his previous role as Rovio CEO.

His expanded brief now takes in Sports Interactive, Creative Assembly, Two Point Studio and assorted other tasks at Sega West. But when we set down to chat at Gamescom this summer the topic of the day was Rovio, and what exactly the company means when it says it is rebuilding.

That was the term used in May, when parent company Sega said its $775m acquisition of the Angry Birds maker had failed to create “economic value” and had restructured.

Rovio laid off 36 staff in October 2025 as a result of Angry Birds Dream Blast’s underperformance and Rovio’s continued integration into new parent company Sega.

In February, Sega wrote down Rovio’s value by around $200m, saying that the company had “found it difficult to advance” its business plans. It also cited lower than forecast profits. In August, Rovio also cancelled Sonic Blitz and closed its Copenhagen office.

Rovio after the restrcuture

With all that done, the Rovio of today looks a little bit different. Espoo is still its largest office and houses its puzzle studio (Angry Birds Dream Blast, Match and Friends), the team behind its Beacon tech, licensing, as well as a lot of central service and support functions.

Rovio Stockholm is its second biggest studio with ~70 staff, mostly responsible for Angry Birds 2. Rovio’s Barcelona teams (~35 staff) work on live ops and monetisation across all of the firm’s titles, and over in Canada, the Toronto studio mostly runs Rovio’s Apple Arcade games. It has a few staff in Montreal, too.

Rebuilding means ‘focusing on what we know’

“I think the main point now is that Rovio needs to be successful at being Rovio,” says Pelletier-Normand. “That’s step number one, and it comes with focus on Angry Birds, on our IP, on our live games, but on new games as well, and the movie that is coming. Let’s focus on what we know, what we’re good at and build from there.”

And to get more from its live titles, Rovio is of course looking into direct to consumer webstores. “I’m not gonna lie, we’re a little bit late to the party,” says Pelletier-Normand. “My personal opinion on this is that from a user perspective it’s not ideal to go out of the game but but we’re in a situation where we’re forced to do this.”

“User acquisition got into the equation, so you need to pay those networks to get visibility because you can’t really get it from the stores…but then you still have to pay the commission to the store. So we’re kind of squeezed in the middle.”

Apple and Google aren’t earning their 30%

Like many others, Pelletier-Normand has concluded that Apple and Google could be doing more to earn their fees – and says he has told the platform holders that himself.

“Ideally, what would happen is that Google and Apple would change their terms so that it’s more reasonable compared to what they’re offering,” he says.

“I’m not saying that they’re not offering anything…they are hosting our games, but I think it’s undeniable that it’s different than what they were offering before. I’m saying this to you, but I’ve said that to them countless times.”

Launching new games in 2026

Pelletier-Normand is also clear that Rovio can’t rely on its live titles forever. Dream Blast appears to be declining, but Angry Birds 2 “grew last year, and it’s continuing to grow now,” he says.

“I cannot think of a better way to make sure that you become completely irrelevant in 10 years than not releasing anything,” he says.

“We still think that we need to be very deliberate when we think about new launches. It’s not trying everything to see what sticks to the wall – it’s having a clear thesis on why this could work.”

What’s next for Angry Birds

That means, for example, that the team working on match 3 puzzler Bloom City Match, which had been in soft launch for three years, has been moved on to work on Angry Birds Match. The latter is a very similar match 3, but with that more familiar brand attached. Bloom City Match was recently removed from the app stores.

Another soft launch title, Angry Birds Rush, is in development at French studio OhBiBi, but that’s some way off, it seems.

“We’re very pragmatic about it. We’re like, okay, let’s try it. Let’s see the numbers. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t…we’re not trying to do everything internally. If it makes more sense to partner for certain type of games, we’ll partner.”

Doing more with Sonic on mobile

The other big in-house IP is, of course, Sonic, but the existing array of Sonic runners on mobile are fairly limited in terms of revenue.

“We feel that the the potential for the brand [on mobile] is larger than than just this, and so we are investigating,” says Pelletier-Normand.

“[Runners] are not the type of games that monetise very well, so that’s partly why we need to explore other genres where we can bring Sonic to a larger community of fans, and potentially monetise the brand through deeper engagement and deeper mechanics.”

Sonic Rumble Party’s struggles

Which brings us to Sonic Rumble Party. It’s not a Rovio game – it was in development at Sega Tokyo long before the acquisition – but naturally, as a mobile game, Rovio helped bring the game to market in May 2025.

Bluntly, it has not performed as expected, says Pelletier-Normand. He acknowledges it is at risk of being cancelled, and perhaps it would have been closed already, if it wasn’t a Sonic game.

“I’m not a decision maker saying we should continue or we should kill it, right, but there is no doubt that it’s much trickier to cancel a Sonic title than it is a brand that people don’t necessarily know…you have those very hardcore fans – it’s tricky. There is no doubt that the game hasn’t been as successful as we would have liked.”

As a result, Rovio is no longer supporting the title as a publishing partner, says Pelletier-Normand, and it is for Sega Japan to decide what happens with it next.

Bringing more Sega IP to mobile

Pelletier-Normand’s expanded remit at Sega also means he’s in charge of the Two Point and Total War games – two strategy series he believes that could translate to mobile really well, if handled carefully.

Two Point Studio is one of the ‘most underrated’ studios in the business, he says, and sees their games as “a perfect fit” for something like Apple Arcade or Netflix. Creative Assembly’s Total War series could work well too, he adds, though their depth and complexity means that bringing them to mobile in the right way will likely take much longer.