Super Mario Run Has Made Just Over $60 Million To Date

This means around 6 million people have downloaded the full game since its 2016 launch.

By comparison, Mario Odyssey, a $60 game released nearly a year later that requires a $300+ Nintendo Switch to play, has already sold-in over 11 million copies.

To compare this with another mobile game, Pokemon Go generated $100+ million in May 2018 alone, nearly 2 years after launch.

Pretty lackluster performance for Super Mario Run, as Nintendo themselves have admitted. Premium is definitely NOT the way to go for mobile games.

Huh. Sounds like it was a slow seller

I never paid and never intended to. Might have splurged on $1 or $2 a stage and tbh that could've made them more money. How about using Luigi for say $3 to $5 and maybe you can make more money from day one.

I appreciate the effort they put into this, but it definitely shows that the mobile market will only support certain business models.

I would have bought it had it been released on Android at the same time as it was initially released on iOS devices.

I imagine it still must've been rather profitable for Nintendo, seeing as it largely reuses Wii U assets and is a fairly short game as far as I know. I know there have been post-release updates, but even so. And by virtue of being a mobile game, that means no cost to physically distribute the software.

I really like the game, but haven't bought it because it requires an internet connection to play.

They probably expected more money but i doubt it cost them more than 60 million to develop so it's still a profit.

Fire Emblem Heroes is quite fun, no wonder is doing so well.

"Disappointment" aside, $60 million is still nothing to sniff at. I'm sure they've at least recouped the budget by now.

Ilike this game and I don't regret paying full price for it.

But yeah it seems that mobile users prefer micro-transactions and loot boxes than paying the full package

-_-

I absolutely loved this game, and probably spent more time in it than several full retail games. Well worth the money. But the mobile market is a sad endeavor.

I bought it when it was on sale for $4.99 but never really got into it

@Tyranexx I'm sure they've still profited--this game pretty much only reused existing assets--but it still seems low considering that this is Mario.

This just calls for more geographical discrimination by not releasing games like FEH to every territory around the world (including mine as well). They released Mario Run everywhere and not FEH and will definitely continue their bullish nature and only let a few territories enjoy their mobile games. Pathetic, I'm disappointed as a fan with their practices (as a Mobile developer, not as a console manufacturer) and doubt I won't be disappointed when their next games will be coming to those few territories as well...

Love Mario Run. Totally worth $10. $60 million disappointing? From an integrity standpoint, I think that Nintendo delivered a great game that wasn't bogged down with microtransactions. Perhaps it was a missed opportunity to make more money, but if they think there's an angle there, they can just make Mario Run 2.

Remember how popular Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies were as premium titles? Sure they were a buck or two — but their sequels had tons of in-game purchases and failed to be as iconic in their success.

Sometimes I think it's worth having a solid title in your catalog.

If they were smart, they'd release Mario Run for the Switch and they'd likely sell it to 50% of the userbase.

@DK-Fan
Mobile gamers deserve what they get!

I hate the illusion. Even though a game on mobile might bring in a tidy profit with the freemium format - that game will always be inferior to a proper product in terms of quality. Because that format of game design is absolute trash.

But from a purely profit prospective, clearly that is the route to go. Because what does the company care if they make their money from millions of tiny purchases as opposed to a smaller number of larger purchases?

I can't see tablet/phone games ever reaching the same level of quality as console or PC games. But I suppose I am just old fashion and stubborn.

@westman98 You're probably right, but it's not really fair to compare a small game like Super Mario Run with Odyssey and Pokemon Go.

@Strumpan
Super Mario Run was the first internally developed mobile game from Nintendo (that isn't Miitomo, RIP) which stars their most iconic character. The game's free demo achieved 200+ million downloads, but not too many people bothered to download the full game. Mario Run should have been a big revenue driver for Nintendo. Only in hindsight can we consider this a "small game", because it absolutely should not have been one.

Maybe the comparison to Pokemon Go is a bit unfair, but then again, a 2 year old game that "nobody plays anymore" should not be making significantly more revenue in a month than Mario Run has made in its lifetime.

I'm pretty optimistic about Mario Kart Tour given that it will be a F2P game, so it's not like Nintendo hasn't learned their lesson about attempting to sell a premium mobile game.

Free to play is not my way.

It’s a shame as the game is really good and I’m very happy I paid for the unlock. I definitely wouldn’t support a sequel with free-to-play mechanics. If they made an F2P version with a premium unlock that would be OK as both markets would be catered for.

Time for a price cut and relaunch? Or a Super Mario Run 2?

I'd rather buy my games and not be pestered for dem money every turn I take. But it is very apparent I am in the minority there, at least in the mobile gaming community.

I paid 50% less for this and enjoyed it. 60 million sounds fantastic for a game with a small (relative) budget.

Yeah I would’ve been surprised if this did well. I got it and enjoyed it... but I don’t think it really was worth the price (it was a fun way to fill time but nothing too impressive and there’s definitely enough free games that you’ll get at least as many hours of enjoyment before having to pay even a cent).

“Free to start” as they called this was doomed from the beginning in the mobile market. There’s a reason the standard has become “free to play” with microtransactions. The average smartphone user will not pay for games. And therein lies the problem. Smartphone games get a majority of their profit from “whales”. “Whales” are the 1% rich players that spend ridiculous amounts of money to get ahead in these games. These are players with large disposable incomes who don’t care if they throw money by the hundreds (sometimes even thousands) into a phone game. “Whales” are still attracted to games with large player bases, so ideally you need a game that many people download (a majority of who will likely lose interest quickly without spending anything) but then offer microtransactions so the “whales” burn a bunch of money in the game to get ahead; these are the players that don’t mind paying for shorcuts. And this is why Fire Emblem succeeded where Mario failed. All the fame in the world doesn’t help if the cap a player can spend ingame is $10. Most players won’t spend the money and the ones who do... only spend $10, not as much as they’d be willing. Meanwhile Fire Emblem is free so lots of people downloaded and played for a chunk of time (and still do) while the players who don’t care if they pay for microtransactions just dump money into the gachapon.

Basically, it’s very telling that the game with Mario made notably less than Fire Emblem. It’s all about the business model. They tried pricing it in a way that their console gamers might be interested (though I doubt it would’ve done any better on 3DS) instead of looking at how mobile games succeed. If they made the standard game free, put a little more effort into the Toad Run mode, and sold tickets for it, I’d bet it would have at least done a bit better.

Granted, once again, it’s not really the best genre for this market. The games that attract whales are games that have more PVP, using either gachapons or timers to encourage players to shell out some cash to get an edge.

@westman98 it was never the price that put me off- it was the fact it required an internet connection to play it. Meant the kids couldn’t use it in car on journeys. I would have paid the asking price if that wasn’t a restriction.

I need all that money

@darthstuey Can't you just share your 4G internet with them?

@Tyranexx Plenty of AAA games are profitable with a number like that. The Witcher 3 had a budget of 40 million for example. I'm certain this game was profitable.

@Heavyarms55 It has nothing to do with you being stubborned or old-fashioned. You are absolutely right, that 99/100 there is only one business model on mobile that really works and that business model has a direct and significant impact on the game's basic design. Not every game is meant to constantly motivate the player to spend (more or less) tiny amounts of cash on it. It takes a very specific, very piecemeal game design, wraped up in a very specific, very repetitive basic gameplay loop to make this viable - esp. long-term over months and years. That's also why there are sooo many successful mobile games, that at their core feel really more or less the same. So yeah, I absolutely agree with you. As far as my taste for games goes, this kind of format will never be able to produce anything I want to waste my time on - but it's also true that this is not the case for billions of other people, who are just fine playing something, that is designed to achieve one thing and one thing only: get them addicted to the rush of an exchange of cash for some kind of instant gratification.

All of this is really much more inspired by the way gambling dens are conceived than traditional games.

"Sensor Tower is now reporting that Super Mario Run has netted Nintendo about $60 million in profits from worldwide player spending"

They did no such thing. They reported $60 million in revenue. That is a major difference. Words mean something.

When reading the article this morning, I was pleasantly surprised. $60 million in profits is a huge amount. If you sell a million full price games, you'd only get around 60 mil in revenue; you can drop it to about 45, 50 mil after the retailers made their money and then you'd still have to subtract the budget and marketing costs.

So yeah, if this had been reported on correctly, I'd have also been somewhat shocked. These aren't exactly the most impressive of numbers.

Whilst I don't think it should have necessarily been released as free to play I do believe the £10 / $10 asking price was too high for a mobile game.

If they'd released it for half that amount or less I'm fairly confident they would have more that doubled their $60 million profit / revenue as more people would have bought it as an impulse purchase.

£10 may be cheap for a Switch game but the mobile market is a different kettle of fish where people want things for nothing.

I don't think temporarily excluding Android users did them any favours either

I thought mobile was a failure and dead market? /s

Imagine how much more they would make if premium currency was introduced by strangling Mario.

Guys can we have some perspective please. Mario + microtransactions = never ever ever ever. Please no. I hope Mario Kart Tour follows the similar design to Mario Run. Free to start (mushroom cup) then a few dollars/pounds per cup. Microtransactions may bring in more profit but IMV devalue the IP which is likely to have serious long term detrimental effects. Also Imagine the bad press if kids spend thousands on Mario Kart Tour in doing so ruining Ninty’s family safe image and destroying future console sales. There is a lot more at stake here than short term micro transaction based profits

@westman98
I disagree
First, Apple and Google take a good 30% off every purchase. Nintendo has probably negotiated a 10-15%.
Then, you have many people (like me) who bought the game on sales.
Finally, you can't compare a mobile game with a AAA game that was one of the reasons people bought the Switch.

Profit is an elusive concept and “budget” isn’t the only factor in determining it. For big companies like Nintendo “expected” profit is the more important factor. Because they are a multi section company that fund their other sections with the “expected” profit from that section. If the profit is below the expected profit, they dont call it “profitable “. If I remember correctly a while ago Nintendo stated it’s dissatisfaction with the profits of Mario Run.

It was a not very interesting idea for a game that cost $10 in a sea of $2 games.

Yeah. People are assuming the game has made 60 million TOTAL. The article clearly says this is 60 million profit. At what margin? So, from Profit figures alone we have no way of telling how many people have paid for the game and extras.

The game was decent, but short. My takeaway is not many people actually thought it was worth $10, not that "premium" games don't work on mobile. 200 milllion people tried it out, and only about 5% paid for it. If Pokemon Go had a premium fee, it would have done gangbusters because people wanted that comment. My buddies kid buy $10-15 skins for fortnite all the time. Anymore $10 isn't alot for a mobile transaction. The market just thought their $10 was better spent elsewhere.

@Killak-00

Nintendo previously stated that 5% of users purchased the full version. While not an exact number, on 200 million downloads, around 10 million purchases is a pretty good estimate. It's pretty clear Nintendo didn't put alot of resources into the game and it didn't sell well either. I correlate the two, but others apparently think people will pay $5 per level instead of the $5 I paid for the full unlock when it was onsale.

The disappointment of 60m profit is a good problem to have.

If we assume that £60m is their 2/3 cut and the game cost £10m to develop/buy shares in DeNA then that adds up to £100m in sales.

At £10/pop that means they sold 10m copies.

Is that really a flop?

Mobile gaming is hopeless. I've seen people say that if the game was priced 50% cheaper, it would have done better. I don't believe that. Mobile games now exist to create an endorphin feedback loop with the rush coming from each new IAP. I'm done with mobile gaming as a platform and I absolutely would have been willing to pay premium prices for complete games.

@NintendoLife you just can’t get “mamma mia” right, can you?

They should port it to the Switch and charge $30 for it.

It will get a 9/10 review on NintendoLife.

@Killak-00 Nope. Read again.

"Nintendo has collected enough gold coins to earn several hundred thousand extra lives in its first mobile Mario outing. According to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimates, Super Mario Run revenue from worldwide player spending has surpassed $60 million on the App Store and Google Play since launching on Apple’s platform in September 2016."

@Akropolon The article also says:

"Sensor Tower is now reporting that Super Mario Run has netted Nintendo about $60 million in profits".

Overall it's unclear from the reporting whether $60 million is a gross or net figure.

@Buizel Well, yeah, but that's mentioned nowhere in the source on which this article is based. Nowhere in the source are profits mentioned. Not even once.

That's Nintendo Life naming one source and then saying something entirely different from the source. That's... that's not how journalism works.

@SwitchVogel: I'm pretty much in agreement with your earlier comment that a different model would have been more profitable, but I still think that Mario Run was an interesting experiment. Nintendo is definitely still weighing options in the mobile space.

@Octane: My comment was intended to be tongue-in-cheek.

And yet, I’ve never spent a dime on this game

Well 10 dollars is cheap for a Mario game but way too expensive for a mobile game. The game is not the best but the main problem is in the business model.It should be free 2 play like everything else.

What about a pokemon game where health care will be expensive like potions and other items. No free healing! It will be a big hit.

@NobodyImportant how is that a problem with a phone though? Or is that sarcastic?

I actually play it on an iPod touch, not a phone. Personally I don't really like the concept of "renting" a game under the pretense that I bought it either, until its discontinued by nintendo. I still play SNES games I bought 20 years ago from time to time.