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Nintendo Businesses Games

Bad Reviews For Super Mario Run Are Sending Nintendo's Stock Tumbling (fortune.com) 221

People aren't loving Nintendo's newly released Super Mario Run. Nintendo's stock plunged 7.1% Monday, bringing its total drop since the game's release last week to more than 11%, Bloomberg reports. The game's mediocre reviews had a similar impact on DeNA, the Nintendo partner that helped with the game's development: Since the game's introduction, its stock has fallen 14%. From a report: Reviews in Apple's App Store (so far, the game is only available on iPhone) show an average rating of two and half stars out of five. Overall, there have been nearly 50,000 reviews. Its reviews make it among the lowest rated app among those at the top of the download rankings, according to Bloomberg.
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Bad Reviews For Super Mario Run Are Sending Nintendo's Stock Tumbling

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  • by drummerboybac ( 1003077 ) on Monday December 19, 2016 @09:50AM (#53513501)
    its a continuous run game with some interesting level layouts. Were people expecting a full on Mario game?
    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      Full disclosure: I haven't played the game, haven't even looked at screenshots.

      My first gaming console was the original NES. I have played almost every Mario game released since the first one there up to the first Galaxy game. To me, Mario games aren't about running quickly from start to finish, it's about finding paths through the levels, secrets, warp pipes etc. It's as much exploration as it is jumping from platform to platform.

      This seemed to be true for most of Nintendo's own games; Mario, Zelda, Metroi

      • by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Monday December 19, 2016 @10:00AM (#53513569) Homepage
        Maybe a game called Super Mario RUN is not for you then? It's not for me either - that's not reason for me to give it a bad review. Question is whether it succeeds on its own merits.
        • When you call it "Super Mario ______", people will automatically have certain expectations based on the history of the franchise, especially when it looks so much like the classic game. Moreover, the premium price of the product also sets certain expectations. Many of the reviewers of No Man's Sky stated that they were more harsh than had it been more reasonably priced at a typical indy game level, rather than as a AAA game.

          If people are giving it bad reviews, then maybe they feel the didn't get their mon

      • My first gaming console was the original NES. I have played almost every Mario game released since the first one there up to the first Galaxy game. To me, Mario games aren't about running quickly from start to finish, it's about finding paths through the levels, secrets, warp pipes etc. It's as much exploration as it is jumping from platform to platform.

        This seemed to be true for most of Nintendo's own games; Mario, Zelda, Metroid all have this sense of being rewarded for going off the beaten bath, lookin

        • by c ( 8461 )

          Yeah..I was reading about this new game and thinking, "Really?"...they're banking on a game that you just push one button to jump, and they're counting on this being a hit?

          It sounds like some pump and dump traders were banking on the game being a hit.

          I'd assume that everyone else would've already be aware that most game releases aren't going to be hits, or even break even, and you gotta roll out a lot of products to get a hit like Pokemon GO.

    • its a continuous run game with some interesting level layouts. Were people expecting a full on Mario game?

      With a price double as high as other great games: yes.

      If it's an Flappy Bird style game, the price has to compete with flappy bird. Yes, high-res sprites with a popular cartoon char can offset that, but not by several 100%. And with the gaming experience that forced always-online-games deliver in trains and subways, it's probably less fun than Flappy Bird and no brand tie-in will save it anymore.

  • by Bartles ( 1198017 ) on Monday December 19, 2016 @09:54AM (#53513531)

    ...why would I play this?

    • I played Batman: Arkam Asylum for 7min 24sec. Why would I play Minesweeper?

      But I've never played a game, I don't know what it's about, but I played a game that sounds similar based on one word in the title, so I just HAVE to post about it on Slashdot.

  • by Jason Levine ( 196982 ) on Monday December 19, 2016 @10:00AM (#53513571) Homepage

    Besides the fact that the Android version is still "To Be Released At An Unannounced Date", my biggest beef is the price tag. You get the first few levels for free and then need to pay $10 to unlock everything else. I don't mind paying for apps I like, but $10 for an endless runner-type game is too much. If it were $1.99, I'd buy it the second it was released for Android. At $2.99, I might consider it. At $10, though, I won't be buying it anytime soon.

    • I don't mind paying for apps I like, but $10 for an endless runner-type game is too much.

      It's not an endless runner.

      Not my cup of tea, but it's totally from, e.g., Temple Runner.

    • Frankly, I am surprised that apps cost what they do on mobile platforms. I assume this is a "race to the bottom" type of condition which I can't see lasting forever, especially as the platforms start to reach functional parity (and hence complexity) with desktop computers.

      Of course, I am from a generation where I paid $70+ of hard earned lawn mowing money for games that came on 3 floppy disks.

      $1 - $2 may make sense for a very small (1 - 3 people) team if there are hundreds of thousands of buyers but I just

      • For a purely digital product with no physical media or distribution cost (other than Apple's cut) you make the biggest profit by setting the price where you get the maximum number of downloads. You don't need big margins if you can make it up in volume (and as a pleasant side-effect, you remove a major incentive for piracy). App makers figured this out pretty fast, I just wish music/movie/ebook makers would figure it out also.
    • The $10 isn't the problem. I'd rather pay a fair price upfront then get a game for "free" and be mired in the micro transaction swamp. And divided out by the value of my time, I've already gotten more than my money's worth in entertainment from it. But the requirement to be always online, despite it being a single-player game and having no content that should require that connection, is fairly... irksome. I missed the news about that problem somehow, so it was a fairly unpleasant surprise.

      Right there, that

      • by mlts ( 1038732 )

        The introduction of IAP completely killed the quality of games in iOS and Android. Before IAP, game designers had to make something that was usable, charge a decent price, and have something worth playing. Usually there was a demo game which was free, then the paid for app.

        Now, almost all games are about a relatively easy 1-2 levels or whatnot, then making the game either impossible or way too time consuming to play, forcing the player to abandon it or start putting money in. You read the reviews of a lo

    • by Hulfs ( 588819 )

      At $2.99, I might consider it. At $10, though, I won't be buying it anytime soon.

      I'd agree, if it was me, but my son (6) spent his own money on the game and is loving it. He's beaten every single level already (there's 24, I think) and is now trying to get every pink coin in the game - which is considerably harder. There is more complexity to the game than just jumping and it's not an endless runner Temple Run clone by any means. There's a lot of pattern recognition, timing and some problem solving needed to figure out how to get some of the coins.

      He also loves being able to "play" a

    • At $10 it's the cheapest Mario game to come out and for an endless runner it has far more to offer than previous runners, not to mention quite a decent amount of gameplay.

      You're de-sensitised to game pricing and riding on the assumptions that Flappybird was free so why shouldn't Super Mario Run be.

      • I never said that it should be free, but the vast majority of games are $4.99 or less - with $2-3 seeming to be the sweet spot. Yes. there are the "free" games that inundate you with in-app purchases of various sorts (and sometimes make it so that the game is all but impossible to complete without these purchases) but I much prefer an upfront fee to being nickel and dimed as I'm playing the game.

        Had Super Mario Run been $4.99, I'd have considered it (when it was released on Android), but at $10, it just see

    • It goes deeper than that for me. If it were an actual $10 app, I would be more interested. Pay once, and everyone in my family could play courtesy of Apple Family Sharing. But by making the unlock an in-app purchase, everyone in my family would have to work over $10. And then there's in-app purchases beyond that.

      I almost bought it anyway because I'm about to fly internationally and would have enjoyed the diversion on the trip. But to combat privacy[sic], Nintendo requires an Internet connection to play. So

      • Good point. My boys love playing games on their tablets (or our old smartphones that are WiFi-only now). If I could buy Super Mario Run for $10 and all of us could use it, then I *might* be able to rationalize it being "only $3.33 per person." Since it's $10 per device (not even per person), it would mean needing to pay for it for my phone, each of my son's tablets, and a pair of old smartphones. (If I wanted the full version on all of our devices.) I could wind up spending $50 on this game. I'd rather just

    • First of all, you defiantly get a decent amount of content to try playing and decide if you want to buy before you make the in-app purchase.

      Secondly, the game is not an endless runner at all. It's a lot more like a normal Mario game, with forward motion handled for you. It's not like you always are going forward; you have pause points so you can time entry into a tricky section, and wall bounces will enable you to go a little bit backwards at times.

      But also on top of that there's a whole racing subgame, a

    • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      but $10 for an endless runner-type game is too much.

      But nobody bats an eye at a $5 coffee.

  • >> People aren't loving Nintendo's newly released Super Mario Run. Nintendo's stock plunged 7.1%

    Well just wait until they see how StarFox Zero did.

    Seriously - I don't understand the panic. Nintendo's will keep licensing its characters (as it always has) until they find the right game and format. Even Link's been pimped out on a retread (Hyrule Warriors - a reskinned Dynasty Warriors).

     
    • Nintendo openly advertised that Hyrule Warriors was a bridge game that used Dynasty Warriors gameplay (and engine) with Zelda assets. It had its own story, its own characters, and everything to make it a Zelda game; and it had the gameplay of a Dynasty Warriors game to add some variety and appeal to those sorts.

      I'd love to see another one, with a step forward into blending the gameplay. This is how we got Zelda 2 and Metroid. Imagine if you could solo dungeons with Link while taking open battlefields a

      • >> Nintendo openly advertised that Hyrule Warriors was a bridge game that used Dynasty Warriors gameplay (and engine) with Zelda assets

        I know. Thus my use of the word "pimped": Nintendo licensed one of its grade-A assets out to a shop that knowingly put together a half-assed "bridge" game to collect money from people who liked Zelda games without actually producing a Zelda game. They've done it before and they'll do it again, because they know people like you will bite.
        • They actually were producing a Zelda game at the time; it was taking too long. This was faster to get out, and people liked it. A different development house did most of the work. I'm not seeing the downside.

    • StarFox Zero was, by all accounts, a pretty bad game and was a horrible commercial flop. But it wasn't actually "news" that it flopped. Investors had already basically written off the Wii-U by the time StarFox Zero released, so all it did was continue the current narrative.

      If Super Mario Run doesn't pan out properly, then that is "news". Nintendo's stocks have been buoyed a bit in recent months by their planned entry into the mobile market. Their home-console sales have been moribund since around 2011. The

  • by xtal ( 49134 ) on Monday December 19, 2016 @10:11AM (#53513649)

    If they'd make a nintendo-branded bluetooth dpad and holder we wouldn't be having this conversation, it would be a conversation about how much money they're making.

    Touchscreens aren't everything. Humans have fingers. D-pad is brilliant. Stop drinking the Ive kool-aid. Poor Mario.

    Oh, and make some more of those NES classics. Stupid nintendo. I'd have bought at least 5 of them if they were available. I got a knockoff chinese USB d-pad clone instead.

    • Right. Lots of people are going to buy a bluetooth dpad to play a throwaway game. This is why slashdotters shouldn't be put in charge of anything.
      • by xtal ( 49134 )

        They have to make the throwaway game because you can't do anything else without a D-pad.

        The market is punishing them because investors aren't stupid, and realize there is no slot machine about to pay out.

    • by dj245 ( 732906 )

      If they'd make a nintendo-branded bluetooth dpad and holder we wouldn't be having this conversation, it would be a conversation about how much money they're making.

      Touchscreens aren't everything. Humans have fingers. D-pad is brilliant. Stop drinking the Ive kool-aid. Poor Mario.

      Oh, and make some more of those NES classics. Stupid nintendo. I'd have bought at least 5 of them if they were available. I got a knockoff chinese USB d-pad clone instead.

      The future of gaming in my family is looking more and more like it will be Retroarch on either Android or Windows for the older games, and Steam for the newer ones. Nintendo offers a pretty decent walled garden, but it isn't a very big garden and the per-game cost is high enough to give pause when compared to the bargains that can be had on Steam.

    • If they'd make a nintendo-branded bluetooth dpad and holder we wouldn't be having this conversation

      You think the answer to people complaining about the cost of a game (all the one star reviews, the others are all 5 stars), is to make people buy an accessory?
      Which company did you run into bankruptcy again?

  • Make sense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chewbacon ( 797801 ) on Monday December 19, 2016 @11:20AM (#53514063)

    You dump a thousand dollars into an iPhone, how the hell can they expect you to pay $10 on a game? That's like 2 days missed at Starbucks.

    Meanwhile, console games went up about $10 and they're flying off the shelves. It's about price? Give me a fucking break.

  • One bad game and everyone forgets who you are! *smirking C. Ronaldo face*
  • So Nintendo makes a stupid game... mind you, not hardware but a one off funny thing and this causes the stock to tumble? For fucks sake! Call me when their consoles catch fire, or everybody's online acconts / wiipoints get plundered.

    Yeah, it's a game. Some people will love, some people will hate it. *shrugs*
  • by wardrich86 ( 4092007 ) on Monday December 19, 2016 @11:47AM (#53514307)
    I'm an Android user living under a rock... is Nintendo basically selling a Mario-themed version of Subway Surfer/Temple Run for $10.00 and expecting people to buy it?!
    • by sl3xd ( 111641 ) on Monday December 19, 2016 @01:18PM (#53515157) Journal

      No. It's fairly normal Mario game. The only "twist" is that you don't have much of a speed control.

      There are "pause" tiles, and tiles which move you backwards. Otherwise, Mario walks to the right constantly.

      It's a "one button" game -- the player can jump. It's a fun game, but you can't go backwards and get every coin, kill every enemy, destroy every block, and find every secret in one playthrough.

      It's a godsend for gamers who only have one thumb free. (feeding a newborn baby can get... dull.)

      It's well made -- easily up to Nintendo's normal standards of excellence. The interaction to "sign up" or "log in" to a Nintendo account is shockingly well done: It's hard to describe, but you know how many games make you switch to your mobile browser, sign up for an online account, go to your email, get the validation code, go back to the web page, validate, and finally go back to the app and log in (again). Nintendo went way above and beyond, and made the process the most smooth, fluid experience I've ever seen on any platform.

      I love it, and spent the $10 in-app-purchase on it.

      • by sl3xd ( 111641 )

        For the record, I hate temple run type games. Mario on iOS isn't remotely similar.

  • Maybe this will put an end to the gameification of adult life.
    • >> put an end to the gameification of adult life

      That's not what "Mario Run" does. The live Pokemon game did that, but this is just a port of Temple Run or its clone (didn't bother to look).
  • I think the biggest problem is that I don't know who they are targeting. The casual gamer (generally using phones and tablets) aren't going to pay this, and me as a traditional gamer sees it as a waste of money for a 'Run' style game. I downloaded it and was hopeful since it was Mario/Nintendo, but really I don't think I need much more than the free levels. It's not engaging to me, and seems to be too expensive for people who find $1.99 a lot to pay at times.
  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday December 19, 2016 @12:32PM (#53514739)

    The cheapest Mario game to date is also the one people complain the most about the cost.

    I'm calling it. The mobile phone generation are over-entitled, spoilt and want everything for free. I hope these companies abandon the platform and go back to focusing on the good old couch experience where they at least know they will be appreciated.

    The game itself is quite good, has a decent amount of content and a wide enough variety of playing styles to set it apart from every other running game. But hey Nintendo, lesson learnt. Don't make good games, just make shit and load it with ads and pay to win, you'll be rich.

  • Color me surprised that a project DeNA was involved with went poorly. They've consistently proven themselves incompetent and I grimaced the day I heard Nintendo announce a partnership with them for mobile.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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