Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima admits Super Mario Run revenues did not meet expectations, but company still prefers “pay once” model vs. freemium
Android launch seen giving bigger boost to publicity, consoles — OSAKA — Though “Super Mario Run” …
Context & Ripple Effects
Super Mario Run has been Nintendo's most public mobile experiment since Shigeru Miyamoto laid out the iOS-first strategy in his September interview, and it has been controversial from the start: by late December the stock was sliding on user complaints about the game's business model, and Nintendo ruled out additional content to shore up revenue. Kimishima had already committed to a cadence of 2-3 mobile games a year starting in 2017, so this admission lands just as that pipeline begins.
The timing matters because the Android release three days earlier — free first three levels, $10 to unlock — was framed not as a revenue engine but as publicity for the console business. Kimishima is effectively conceding that the premium price failed commercially while doubling down on it anyway.
First-order effects
- Nintendo's stated 2-3-mobile-games-a-year plan now launches from a position of admitted weakness: the flagship title missed revenue expectations, putting pressure on every subsequent title's pricing decision.
Second-order effects
- By defending 'pay once' despite the miss, Nintendo forces the question onto its next mobile releases — whether they follow Super Mario Run's premium model or quietly drift toward the freemium norm that dominates app-store revenue.
Third-order effects
- If Nintendo holds the line, mobile becomes a marketing channel feeding console sales rather than a profit center in its own right — a structural split from rivals whose mobile operations must self-fund, and a test of whether premium IP can sustain non-freemium pricing on the app stores.
The trend: Premium IP holders are discovering that app-store economics favor freemium, forcing a choice between monetization maximization and brand-protective pricing that treats mobile as console advertising.