No more guessing
According to Bloomberg tech reporter Yuji Nakamura, we now have a definitive answer on Super Mario Run‘s sales, and as expected, they’re pretty poor (at least, compared to what the Big N was expecting).
According to Nakamura, Nintendo revealed that although Super Mario Run had been downloaded a whopping 78 million times, it only managed to convert 5% of its userbase. Nintendo was apparently expecting “double digit” numbers on premium customers, so this is roughly half of what they wanted in sales. Yikes! And this is with Mario, a marquee character and tons of Apple-led advertising. “Only 5%” is still millions of dollars on a low-cost mobile game, but again, this is Nintendo, and they aim higher than a lot of other publishers. It’ll be interesting to see them make that climb in the mobile arena. As a reminder, the Android version has yet to drop.
In other news, Run just got a new update that added an easy mode to the game (unlimited time/bubbles) and makes it harder to lose Toads after failing in Toad Rally. I wonder how they’ll pivot the $9.99 price with this news?
Yuji Nakamura [Twitter]
