Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima has stated to the Nikkei that the revenue amassed from Super Mario Run didn’t meet the company’s expectations. However, Nintendo has said that they prefer the Super Mario Run business model compared to that of Fire Emblem Heroes which relies on micro transactions. The company’s overall goal with mobile titles has been to entice consumers towards their dedicated platforms.
Revenue From Super Mario Run Didn’t Meet Nintendo’s Expectations
Then cut the price. I completely agree with his stance on micro transactions. I’d much rather pay for a full game than continuously pour money into it; but they’re asking $10 for a mobile game. Surely whatever money they spent developing the game has already been made back from previous sales. Every sale from here on is pure profit. Drop the price to $2 and watch it take off.
I agree it was too expensive, but thats not what kept me from buying it. I can’t speak for everyone, but I didn’t get the game because of the always online feature. To me that’s the dumbest thing Nintendo could have done. If you don’t have unlimited data on your phone, (most people don’t) then you basically have to pay every time you play the game. Instead of paying Nintendo your paying the phone company. I don’t have enough data on my phone to dedicate to a mobile game. I can understand it with a game like Pokémon go, that game requires online and it was worth it. Mario run is NOT worth wasting my data over and other than Nintendos paranoia, there is no good reason it should require it. I mean it’s a Mario game ffs. I should be able to download it to my phone and play it whenever I want.
The data usage was never an issue for me, but it was an issue. I understand that Nintendo wants to protect their IP and deter illegal copies of the game, but their mobile strategy is supposedly to expose as many people as possible to Nintendo trademarks and draw those people to their dedicated hardware. If that’s the case, and the mobile titles are really just a means to an end, is piracy in the mobile space really an issue? It’s very possible that the people stopped from pirating the game due to the always online requirement are less than the people prevented from playing the game due to unnecessary data usage.
Plus their idiot ideas aren’t gonna stop the real bad guys. People that really want to break the law are almost always gonna find ways around any red tape. I’m not saying Nintendo, or anyone for that matter, shouldn’t try to fight it but there are ways to fight it without essentially punishing your paying customers in the process.
That’s exactly the problem though. People won’t pay premium prices for mobile games because they perceive them all to be of low value. Even though Mario Run is the cheapest mario game ever and it’s really good! If people want mobile games to improve, we have to break this perception and get used to higher prices.
If they cut the price that deep it will piss off all the fans who bought it early on at full price, and lower the consumer’s perception of value for a mario game. Maybe 5 or 7 dollars is a fair compromise.
They essentially do the same with Nintendo Selects, though. Are people that paid 40-60 bucks for them getting screwed when said game because a 20 dollar Nintendo select?
PEASANTS!!!!
~Peach
The pricing model wasn’t the issue it’s the initial price that was. If the wanted to make a killing they should have charged 5 bucks straight up for the game at the time. Wait for 6 months then 5 bucks for double the levels double playable characters. The switch is out with breath of the wild they could have did breath of the wild content.
It’s too bad. I beat the free portion in one day so maybe in the future I’ll buy it but for now I’ll just keep doing Toad levels to get thousands.
Once you pay and play the other levels in the singlemode, all of the levels unlock in the Toad course. I played this most of the day yesterday, beating the world 1, playing the toad courses, beat world 2, then playing those courses, etc. I only am up to world 3. If you alternate this way, the game will last a while.
I’m grabbing 3 colors of toads for the time being.
“Nintendo has said that they prefer the Super Mario Run business model compared to that of Fire Emblem Heroes which relies on micro transactions.” Preach, brother.
What a surprise… It’s probably because they left out around 90% of the entire smartphone market (Android)…
While it was priced fairly Nintendo should have gone down the route of offering the full game as priced rather than making it ‘free to start’. A lot of the criticism came from angry reviews on the App Store from people that didn’t know the full game was at the price it was. They could have released a demo version in addition to the full game.
I easily paid the $10. I am having a blast doing the online speed runs. Plus with lots of characters to choose from, each with unique gameplay abilities, it has lots of replayability. Even though you literally just jump, the controls feel tight. When I mess up, I know I messed up and not the game. I also like how the level changes every time you collect the 5 special coins… and they are hard to get.
Probably the best time I’ve had playing mario since I was a kid playing Super Mario World with friends.
My wife is die hard Mario (as am I but I don’t play mobile games) and she also loves it, finds it addicting and challenging when it needs to be as she moves forward… I think the game was a good price, the marketing of leaving out Android for so long might have been the mistake.
I think it is a great game and $10 is reasonable.
The Android market only opened up yesterday. How can they say they were disappointed in revenue when 90% of the market didn’t have it. I’d say that most people probably don’t even know it came out yesterday.
So basically this article is saying he was disappointed in the iOS sales.
They can easily add worlds and characters through updates. If they keep developing it, it should make some loot.
Wait wait…
So you guys think that Apple only owns 10% of the smartphone market?
Gotta do your homeworks, folks. Android does *NOT* own 90% of the mobile market.
I thought the same thing, and he seems to be correct
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/1/11836816/iphone-vs-android-history-charts
Even by TIME’s 2013 standards, it seems like Android was starting to catch up and surpass Apple’s iOS
http://techland.time.com/2013/04/16/ios-vs-android/
90% may be an overestimate (even though the first article shows as such), but seems like Apple’s install base is by far smaller than I realized
While Android does have about 90% of the global market, the App Store, in a similar way to how Apple made 92% of all smartphone profits for 2016, generates over 75% more revenue than the Play Store. The App Store makes significantly more money. Market Share matters less; I know this personally from being an app developer. If you want money, the App Store is the most important. In general, iOS users spend more on apps, download more apps, and use their apps more often.
Even if they released it on Android the same day as iOS, the difference most likely would have been insignificant. It’s likely that Apple paid Nintendo for a time exclusive, but they also likely assisted Nintendo in some way in preparing the game for Dec. 15, 2016. Along with very heavy marketing, which probably made the biggest impact in sales. It’s even possible they could have made more money this way.
I believe the biggest reason for the disappointment is caused by the content and pricing. I agree if they keep developing it, more people might buy the full game. I don’t know how they will profit though. I always thought there should have been more worlds or courses to play. There’s so much I love about the game.
Game is overpriced. They left out Android, I was hyped to play it back in December or November when it released. I couldnt care less about it now. I was willing to drop ten dollars then now there’s no way I’ll do that
Halo is overpriced, uncharted is overpriced, Mario is overpriced…. Everything is overpriced… Lets just do things for free. /Way to sound like an entitled millennial
Your own idiotic assumptions make me sound that way to you.If you have nothing with actual substance to comment please refrain from replying, it’s just a waste of time. To comment on your reply, in what world do Halo and uncharted fall into a discussion about a Mario app game. Think a little next time you reply Mr.Trim.
Well, they got my ten dollars. So I did my part.
Mobile shit should be microtrasanctions.
FE is pretty good, and I have given some money to it.
$10 was too steep for a lot of people. I also prefer Nintendo doesn’t use the micro transaction strategy that Fire Emblem uses. I think $5 would have been a better sweet spot.
ITS TOO EXPENSIVE YOU TOOLS
Just curious, how much do you pay a month for your cell phone plan?
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Still not understanding how $10 is over priced. You have the internet now, commenting here… you are not homeless
If only they could have seen this coming. Like, say they announced their price, and then users everywhere said no, too much for what you’re offering.
Then get rid of the god damn DRM! That screwed over everyone on an iPad or iPod and just put a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. I’ll never purchase a game that requires permanent internet connection. Don’t treat your customers like thieves.
No shit it didn’t. It’s very expensive for a mobile game, has to be always online, and rooted/jailbroken users cannot play without installing complicated stuff to their phones(spent the entire day trying to get Magisk to pass safetynet). Oh also it didn’t come out on the biggest mobile platform, Android, until yesterday. They pretty much sent it out to die.
Everyone’s acting like the game flopped. It didn’t meet their expectations, but it was still a huge success. Just 3 months ago, it was downloaded 78 million times and more than 5% paid for full version. That might seem low, but that’s over 3,900,000 people that paid $10 for it, earning 39,000,000 for the company on iOS alone (and much more by now, I’m sure). It was by no means “sent out to die”. It was their first Mario mobile game, they could take a risk at experimenting with a higher price point. If it didn’t sell, lower it or have a sale. But it did well, they just expected it to make even more is all. But the people who didn’t pay were still valuable to Nintendo. Part of the reason for the mobile games is to entice them to buy Nintendo’s consoles and handhelds. So it’s all very relevant. I find it hilarious that people complain $10 is too high and that it should be $8, ’cause that whole $2 extra is soooo much more expensive, right?
firstly would like to say that I don’t intent to buy the game and never have the intention to. However I know from mobile gamer that having on IOS in December then March on Android was a monumental error.
I don’t know the price in UK but if the game is £10 I would say that a terrible error. less than that I can have a brand new game on PS3, wii, PS vita or even Wii U. Now just because it’s Mario does not means it worth £10 (whatever the £ value of the $ at this time).
Saying that I am very happy cause it just means that Nintendo will not be keen on focus lot of effort on mobile game. So it’s a very good news at the end.
They should make it only piracy check when there’s wifi since everyone’s bound to connect to wifi at some point.
Considering the bullshit DRM Super Mario Run has that Nintendo idiotically thought was a good idea, some people would ultimately pay more to their phone provider to play the game than they will for buying the game from Nintendo. Contrary to popular belief, some, if not most, plans calling themselves “unlimited” data are not truly unlimited as even those have a data cap. AT&T in the United States is one such company guilty of this lie of so called “unlimited data.” I guess Nintendo didn’t take the greedy phone companies in the United States into consideration when they decided on DRM. In fact, if they paid any attention to the Xbox One fiasco when that Mattrick asshole was the president of the Xbox Division, they would have known America utterly hates DRM.