The Other Worlds Shrine

Your place for discussion about RPGs, gaming, music, movies, anime, computers, sports, and any other stuff we care to talk about... 

  • Super Mario Run

  • Because playing them is not enough, we have to bitch about them daily, too. We had a Gameplay forum, but it got replaced by GameFAQs.
Because playing them is not enough, we have to bitch about them daily, too. We had a Gameplay forum, but it got replaced by GameFAQs.
 #169641  by Don
 Thu Dec 22, 2016 2:00 am
So unless you're living under a rock you should know this is out for iPhone. I'm not going to talk about the merit of the game itself, but I've noticed some marketing data site seems shockingly fake. I go to https://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/. It might not be App Annie but I think it's supposed to be reputable and it doesn't ask for money. Well, the site claims SMR has basically exactly $2 million revenue for the past 4 days before dipping to $1.6 million today. Now, how can this possibly be true? Super Mario Run is not a F2P game in the sense that you can buy additional stuff. I can buy that a game like Pokémon GO, given a large enough audience with a predictable spending pattern, you end up with very similar daily revenues. But SMR is a one time purchase. This means for the past 4 days, roughly exactly 200K copies were sold each day in the USA, because apparently people agreed ahead of time to buy exactly 200K copies, no more and no less, per day. I mean, it's not like if you're a huge Nintendo fan you bought SMR on day one, and then you say 'this game is great I think I'll buy another copy tomorrow too to support Nintendo to keep their numbers up'. I don't doubt that SMR was #1 for the last 4 days, but there's no way I can believe people bought nearly exactly 200K copy of the day for 4 days straight.

Of course, since I only hear Nintendo talking about 40 million downloads but not the actual sale I guess they're not actually sharing the numbers so sites can only guess, but this looks completely fake. It's basically a console game selling within 1% of its first day sales for 4 consecutive days, which doesn't match any human behavior I know of. Then again, maybe companies do guard their data closely so that people can only have random guesses? I remember when people tried to make charts for MMORPG subscription and unless it's something like WoW that's actually going up you might as well just make up some random numbers and it's as good a guess as whatever the industry expert says because nobody is actually willing to share the data if it looks bad. Of course even WoW started going down and I think anyone's best guess of WoW's current sub is between 1 and 1 billion.
 #169642  by Julius Seeker
 Thu Dec 22, 2016 7:20 am
Super Mario Run is a shareware game, you get the features and some levels free, and then you can buy the rest after completing those. But that site could be a little off, as sales were reported as being $14 million in 72 hours.

Given the model, which puts a cap on revenue, I think this game is more of an advertisement than anything. This game will not have legs like Pokemon Go. But, this mobile strategy has been fairly positive for Nintendo, as "Nintendo" has been trending higher on google over the last month or so has been higher than they have since December 2009; the second last month of Wiimania, when the Wii was selling out in minutes after every shipment.


An issue is that, like many action games, it's far more more suitable for iPhone rather than iPad.GTA is a nightmare to control on iPad, but on iPhone it's in the region of the PS2 controller.

It has some interesting design in it terms of the platforming, but overall is a very easy game to get through in one sitting... It's also addictive to play. There are coin modes which extend the gameplay, a mushroom kingdom town builder, and a competition mode. One of the interesting aspects of the town builder is the functional benefit buildings, some of which just give straight up bonuses, and others give access to bonus levels; there are a few pipes, I don't know where they lead, but their info suggests something like Star Road. But it's one of those games like the Fallout mobile, I don't see myself playing it after 2 weeks.
 #169643  by ManaMan
 Thu Dec 22, 2016 9:30 am
I downloaded it but haven't had much time to play it. My kids love it. Especially my three year old, since the game runs for you and is extremely forgiving, it's a game that she can actually play.

Looks fun. My wife has been playing it quite a bit and says it gets really challenging to try to max out a level (get all the coins etc).