Mario Is Moving Away From Mobile Games

In an exclusive interview with Variety, legendary video game designer, Nintendo fellow and self-proclaimed "Mario's mom", Shigeru Miyamoto, said: "Mobile apps will not be the primary path of future Mario games." From the report: After two moderately successful but dwindling iOS games, plus another that shuttered after two years, Nintendo is pulling Mario away from the mobile market. Released in 2016, Super Mario Run grossed $60 million in its first year, while 2019's Mario Kart Tour has generated $300 million (compared to Mario Kart 8's $3 billion and counting). Without explanation, Nintendo removed 2019's Dr. Mario World from app markets two years after its release.

"First and foremost, Nintendo's core strategy is a hardware and software integrated gaming experience," said Miyamoto, who played a pivotal role in designing the Wii, among other Nintendo consoles. "The intuitiveness of the control is a part of the gaming experience. When we explored the opportunity of making Mario games for the mobile phone -- which is a more common, generic device -- it was challenging to determine what that game should be. That is why I played the role of director for Super Mario Run, to be able to translate that Nintendo hardware experience into the smart devices."

Elaborating on the merits of Run and Tour, Miyamoto continued, "Having Mario games as mobile apps expands the doorway for far more audience to experience the game, and also expands the Mario gaming experience, where you only need your thumb on one hand." Referencing the innovation of the Super Mario Maker series and Super Mario Odyssey, which Miyamoto called "the ultimate evolution of a Mario adventure game on a typical 3D platformer," the Nintendo exec laid out how the company begins to develop a Mario game: "We try to define what is the gameplay, what is the method, and then define what devices we go on." When asked when fans can expect the next mainline Mario game, Miyamoto chuckled and said: "All I can say is please stay tuned for future Nintendo Directs."

Unpopular Opinion

[NateFromMich]

I'd rather they just let Mario be, but I suppose with the movie and everything, and the fact that I'm approaching 50, I'm going to end up dying first.

Ya, why hand over 30% of your revenue to Apple?

[John Smith 2294]

Nintendo is much better off flying solo. It would be stupid to give anyone 30% of that franchise for any reason.

Re: Ya, why hand over 30% of your revenue to Apple

[SleepingEye]

It's cute you think Nintendo pays 30% to the app stores

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[narcc]

Do you have some evidence to the contrary?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[mrfaithful]

Mobile development has few winners to many MANY losers. The trick tends to be make 10 games in rapid succession and kill the 9 that don't work out. Fine if you're making 10x Clash of >, not so fine if it's a household name like Mario. Nintendo still wants to make few games of a high quality and I applaud them for it when the world seems to be chasing the algorithm with stack it high and sell it cheap combined with psychologically manipulative techniques to keep the vulnerable spending. Many companies hav

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[Voyager529]

Many companies have tried making higher quality console like games for mobile but it just doesn't work.

I think this speaks to a different issue of expectations.

For the original Game Boy model, a game was a one-time purchase with a one-time release. Games cost around $40 in 1993, or about $84 in 2023 dollars. There were no updates or patches or server-side storage or over-the-internet multiplayer or anything to that effect. Money changed hands, a game cartridge changed hands, that was the end of it. If a game had issues, it was deemed a crappy game and got reviewed poorly and didn't sell well. It was relative

Most mobile games

[fropenn]

Are just terrible. In fact, nearly all of them are terrible. You don't want your core product - Mario, in Nintendo's case (or maybe Zelda) - associated with a terrible game and a terrible experience. It's brand protection and a good move by Nintendo, in my opinion (especially after that clunker of a movie).

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[J-1000]

Super Mario Run is actually a high-quality game. But it's veeery limited due to the touch controls. (There's basically one big button.) Nintendo is fine skipping mobile games altogether. Mobile games supplement other games; they don't supplant them. For a while there they probably wondered if traditional handhelds would go away, but the Switch and Steam Deck are evidence that that is not the case.

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[fropenn]

I agree that the graphics were nice and it ran smoothly, but the gameplay was boring and just not up to par for what I would expect from a Mario game. I found myself preferring the GameBoy version of SuperMarioLand over Super Mario Run, but maybe that's just because I'm old.