In his interview at NEXT11 Peter Vesterbacka talked about Rovio’s journey to creating the best-selling game ‘Angry Birds’.

Before developing ‘Angry Birds’, Rovio had already published 51 games, including ‘Bounce’ and ‘Need for Speed’ for mobiles. So the company really knows what it takes to create a hit game. According to Peter, one of these is to build in lots of character and key to ‘Angry Birds’ popularity is the almost spherical bird with the angry eyebrows.

Another factor in ‘Angry Birds’ success is that it’s easy to play – and appeals to everyone from one-year olds to grandparents. With about 140 million downloads at the time of the interview, Vesterbacka emphasised that it’s the level of engagement players have with a game that determines whether or not it will be a winner.

Because they developed their game for various platforms (such as iPhone, Android and the web) Rovio doesn’t have to rely on one medium, in the way that, for instance, Zynga relies on Facebook.

With masses of merchandising, and the promise of a forthcoming movie, the future looks great for ‘Angry Birds’, if the examples of Sanrio and Spongebob are anything to go by.