It was easy for me to pick Jami Laes out in a crowd, even among the 150,000 attendees at the 2014 International CES tech tradeshow last week in Las Vegas. He was the guy wearing the bright red Angry Birds hoodie. And why not? Angry Birds has given his Helsinki-based company, Rovio Entertainment, a path to instant recognition.
More plush toys at Rovio HQ.
The mobile game series has been downloaded nearly 2 billion times, and a video cartoon series has seen more than 1 billion downloads in just seven months. It falls on Laes, Rovio’s executive vice president of games, to keep this juggernaut going. Many in the game industry have questioned whether Rovio can do that, given the popularity of other mobile games that are making good headway in dethroning the birds, like Supercell’s Clash of Clans and King’s Candy Crush Saga.
Unlock premium content and VIP community perks with GB M A X! Join now to enjoy our free and premium perks.
Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
GamesBeat