Interview with Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto on Super Mario Run and why Nintendo is bringing its game to iOS first
Super Mario on mobile devices seemed inevitable, but I'm not sure anyone expected the official unveiling to helm an Apple event. Sure enough, in the lead up to Apple's …
Context & Ripple Effects
This interview sits at the midpoint of Nintendo's mobile pivot: the game was unveiled on stage at an Apple event in September as an iOS-first side-scroller timed for the holidays, and by the time of these later interviews Miyamoto is explaining the design choice that defines it — Mario runs on his own, so the game works for people who have never touched a controller.
That framing matters because the mobile release is explicitly positioned as an on-ramp: Miyamoto says the point is to introduce new players to Nintendo, not to replicate the console experience on phones.
First-order effects
- Nintendo is putting its most valuable character on a rival hardware platform for the first time, with the iPhone launch days away and the free-to-start pricing still being decided — a direct bet that reach beats platform exclusivity.
- Apple gets a marquee exclusive for its ecosystem: a flagship Nintendo franchise debuting on iOS hands the App Store a holiday-season draw no other phone maker can match.
Second-order effects
- The strategy hardens into a pipeline: president Tatsumi Kimishima commits to releasing two to three mobile games per year starting in 2017, meaning Super Mario Run is the opening move of a cadence, not a one-off experiment.
- Other console IP holders now face pressure to answer — if Nintendo will lend Mario to iOS, the argument for keeping franchises locked to proprietary hardware weakens across the industry.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mobile becomes the top of Nintendo's funnel — free or cheap phone games feeding players toward consoles — inverting the old model where first-party software existed only to sell hardware.
- Platform owners like Apple gain leverage over content owners: when a franchise as strong as Mario launches iOS-first, distribution scale starts dictating terms that console makers once set themselves.
The trend: Console IP holders are shifting from guarding their own hardware to using smartphone distribution as the entry point of a broader games business, one franchise at a time.