Despite mixed reception, Super Mario Run likely to be 'hugely profitable' for Nintendo

Super Mario Run, the much-awaited debut of Nintendo's mascot on smartphones, blew away most expectations when it launched on the App Store.

The 127-year-old company — which originally sold playing cards and children's toys before making video games — announced the game was downloaded 40 million times in less than four days, blowing past the previous record holder, Pokemon Go, which took 11 days to reach 25 million.

Mobile analytics site Sensor Tower estimates Nintendo made more than $21 million US ($28 million Cdn) in that period.

But after the game received lukewarm reviews from critics and users, Nintendo's stock has sunk more than 14 per cent since it launched.

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Users and investors' biggest point of contention is the payment model. Players can try the game's first three levels for free, but it only takes a few minutes to breeze through them. After that, it costs $13.99 ($9.99 US) to unlock the full 24-level World Tour.

Older gamers will remember this as the "Shareware" model used by PC games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D in the 1990s.

But to the hundreds of millions of people who only play games on their smartphones, it was considered confusing — even deceptive.

Most free-to-play games feature in-app microtransactions that make the game easier, instead of paywalls that block access to the rest of the game. Pokemon Go, made by Niantic, is free to download, but you can spend real money to buy extra Pokeballs if you're running low, for example.

Other apps with hard prices are listed separately in the Paid Apps section, and ask for the payment up front instead of a few levels in.

Serkan Toto, a Tokyo-based games consultant, believes Nintendo stuck to the price point to maintain Mario's image as "an extremely premium IP."

"They didn't want to slap a $2 price point on it because, in my eyes, Nintendo would have thought that it cheapens the appeal of the IP," he says.

Investors push for free-to-play

Investors, meanwhile, have been adamant that Super Mario Run should have used the free-to-play model that most of the top-grossing apps in the mobile market have been using for years.

"The investors want profit and sales … from Nintendo's mobile games, and they want a lot of it. And they want them to jump on the free-to-play bandwagon," says Toto.

Nintendo's sometimes testy relationship with investors has been met with bemusement and derision from the gaming community.

During a 2014 investors' Q&A session, one person angrily questioned why Nintendo execs chose to talk about "such childish topics" as video games with them at all.

At another meeting that year, hedge fund manager Seth Fischer urged the company to consider how much money a free-to-play game with micro-transactions could make them.

"Just think of paying 99 cents just to get Mario to jump higher," he was quoted saying in the Wall Street Journal.

Gamers seethed at the suggestion.

Mixed reception from gamers

Reception to Super Mario Run in the console and PC market, meanwhile, was mixed, but for different reasons.

The $13.99 price might be high in the mobile market, but it seems a bargain when a new game on home consoles costs $40 to $80.

Gamers instead took issue with the changes that came about during the move to a platform without the luxury of buttons and a directional pad to control Mario.

Running forward and vaulting over enemies automatically are drastic changes to the formula that erase much of the precise control the series is known for.

Polygon gave it a 7/10, calling it "an enjoyable but imperfect adaptation of the Mario games for touchscreen devices," and saying "the experience is sometimes hamstrung by the game's limited control."

Players both new and old also criticized the requirement for an internet connection, meaning some players can't play it on a subway commute, and its high data usage — reportedly up to 50MB an hour.

'It's like printing money'

Despite the lukewarm reception, Nintendo is in a position to reap major rewards from its experimental dive into the mobile market.

"Super Mario Run, despite the negative reviews and the fall of the stock price, is a hugely profitable endeavour. This is not a boxed-game that costs 50 million or 100 million dollars to make," Toto says.

He estimates it wasn't a costly app to develop. All of the character models and art assets appear taken or adapted from older 2D Mario games on the Wii and Wii U.

"Every [paying] user after the costs are covered is basically printing money for Nintendo," he says.

Beyond that, Nintendo hopes the newly widened attention on Mario will drum up more interest for the Switch, its next dedicated gaming console.

It's happened before. Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon for the 3DS, which launched in November, sold 3.7 million copies in less than two weeks. That makes them the fastest-selling retail releases in the series history, thanks in part to Pokemon Go's viral popularity.

Toto, however, sees even greater potential for Nintendo in the mobile space, one that might sound like an uncomfortable truth for traditionalist gamers: a well-executed free-to-play Mario game on smartphones could make the company more money than all of its console and handheld endeavours combined.

"If that's executed in the right way, I think they could make billions just off that, and they would quickly ignore the marketing effects of mobile games on the console sales," he says.