Super Mario Run demo stations installed in Apple Stores for pre-release play
Nintendo's highly-anticipated "Super Mario Run" will be available to all users on Dec. 15, but until then, people anxious to play the game can head to an Apple Store for a few minutes of hands-on time with the title.
"Super Mario Run" was featured alongside the forthcoming Nintendo Switch console on The Jimmy Fallon Show on Wednesday, with an appearance from Nintento U.S. chief Reggie Fils-Aime.
"I feel like Mario was what introduced millions of people to video games and interactive entertainment, and I think that Mario will continue to serve that role," designer and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto told The Verge. "And I think with Super Mario Run that's exactly what's going to happen."
"Super Mario Run" is an endless runner title with the same graphical style used for Mario for decades, playing similarly to long-term iOS titles "Canabalt" or "Jungle Run." Users tap on the screen to make Mario jump to avoid obstacles, strike objects, and clear gaps.
The longer a user taps, the higher Mario jumps. On-screen items or tiles can reverse Mario's direction, or stop forward progress to allow for precise timing of a jump.
The title also includes a new battle mode called "Toad Rally," where victory is determined by the number of coins you collect, with the "ghost" of your competition visible as you run, and by the number of Toad characters you impress. Progress across all modes is tracked by the number of coins the player has collected, as well as with persistent scorekeeping.
The initial download will be free, and will feature three game modes with limited progress available. The entire title will unlock for $9.99.
"Super Mario Run" debuted at Apple's September iPhone 7 release event. A set of stickers for the iOS 10 version of iMessage was made available shortly after the reveal.
"Super Mario Run" was featured alongside the forthcoming Nintendo Switch console on The Jimmy Fallon Show on Wednesday, with an appearance from Nintento U.S. chief Reggie Fils-Aime.
"I feel like Mario was what introduced millions of people to video games and interactive entertainment, and I think that Mario will continue to serve that role," designer and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto told The Verge. "And I think with Super Mario Run that's exactly what's going to happen."
"Super Mario Run" is an endless runner title with the same graphical style used for Mario for decades, playing similarly to long-term iOS titles "Canabalt" or "Jungle Run." Users tap on the screen to make Mario jump to avoid obstacles, strike objects, and clear gaps.
The longer a user taps, the higher Mario jumps. On-screen items or tiles can reverse Mario's direction, or stop forward progress to allow for precise timing of a jump.
The title also includes a new battle mode called "Toad Rally," where victory is determined by the number of coins you collect, with the "ghost" of your competition visible as you run, and by the number of Toad characters you impress. Progress across all modes is tracked by the number of coins the player has collected, as well as with persistent scorekeeping.
The initial download will be free, and will feature three game modes with limited progress available. The entire title will unlock for $9.99.
"Super Mario Run" debuted at Apple's September iPhone 7 release event. A set of stickers for the iOS 10 version of iMessage was made available shortly after the reveal.
Comments
"Available on iPhone and iPad", said Reggie.
As it should be. I'm tired of people thinking iKnockoffs are just as good.
We need to go back to the iPod days when if a device had a click wheel it was shunned as a cheap ripoff.
Tim Cook's visit to Nintendo headquarters seemed to have been for exclusivity discussions. Not just to play the new Mario. The more exclusivity, the closer we get to people understanding that if it's not an iPhone it's not an iphone.
Ideally Apple would buy Nintendo since they both need each other.
Then come back in a few years, look back and remember this is the day Nintendo turned around after realizing just how much money there is in mobile (especially iOS).
They should have partnered with Apple years ago on mobile by bringing all their franchise games over.
I'll be here to rub that in your face after I'm proven right. I bet this single title accounts for 10% of their entire revenue stream. One. Single. Game.
Pokemon Go made $600 million in a few months. Candy Crush hit $600 million in about 7 months. Nintendo only made $4.4 billion last year. I don't think you realize how much money there is in mobile games.
Obviously Nintendo has made the Switch, shown in the video, to maintain full controller interaction so they don't want mobile to replace their systems but they may as well get something out of the huge mobile audience and Mario Run looks really polished. The game has 24 levels (first 4 free to play) and launch is December 15th. The video above had one level completed in around 2 minutes so it might be possible to complete the game in under an hour but the original Mario games were quite short too:
https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=9387
Here's a complete play-through in 3.5 hours:
Mario Run also has features to compete with other player times and it needs about 3 plays per level to collect all the coins. More collectibles lets you unlock characters and things. I think it will serve as a good example of what a high production value company can do with a mobile-first title and it should generate decent revenue for NIntendo. You can see their revenues over the last few years here, an extra billion here and there is significant enough not to ignore:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/216622/net-sales-of-nintendo-since-2008/
The Apple Store demos are one area where Apple is a good choice for big publishers. Nintendo couldn't do this with other mobile platforms. Microsoft has nowhere near the marketshare and the rest would be phone stores. The Apple Store is like having the game retailers.
With a handful of their biggest franchises, Nintendo could pull in $1-2 billion per year on iOS and it's not an ecosystem that depends on their own hardware so they can boost revenue between product cycles. Their Switch hardware looked pretty smooth in that video above running Tegra, performing close to a PS4/XBO. Mobile hardware performance is not going to be the limitation with gaming, it's the controllers and monetization. That's a slight problem with the PC platform too as developers have to support the primary input first (KB/mouse) and some don't put controller support in and so things like the Steam controller try to address this.
On mobile, a very small portion of people buy the controllers so games companies have no choice but to support the 2-3 simultaneous inputs on touch devices. It's tricky for Apple to fix this because they wouldn't just stick extra buttons on the side of the iPhone and iPad. If you hold an iOS device with both hands in landscape, what's missing is inputs for the fingers. Given that adding buttons is not ideal, they'd have to either allow tap input (but this isn't analog and wouldn't be reliable) or they can do gesture input like LEAP motion. There would be a band running round the outside of the device that detects finger location and movement. This can detect finger presses in an analog way very precisely. The sensor can also be used for other things like detecting which hand you hold the phone in and if your thumb is trying to reach up high so that the UI automatically moves down vs using reachability. It can be used for volume controls, camera controls, music control when the display is off e.g tap one side to skip a track, the other to go back, slide to scrub through and it can detect this through clothing. It can scroll web pages without occluding the view.
Until something like this is added, mobile gaming will be simpler. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as it's a different usage scenario. When you are mobile, it's very hard to become engrossed in a game that you can't just stop playing at any point. Would people play MGS V while sitting at a bus stop for 10 minutes? Immersive games don't fit into a mobile environment in the same way that movies don't. This is why they designed Mario Run to be playable with one hand, the designer said you could play it while holding onto a handle on the bus, while carrying a bag or while eating.
The price is high relative to other mobile titles but it's best for them to start high to allow for sales. They can have a half price sale over Christmas for example. It's easy for them to lower the price but harder to go back up and it doesn't have in-app purchases to make up for it. They could do in-app purchases by having extra levels later though.
Another game that would be good for them to bring to iOS would be Mario Kart. They can do multiplayer transparently where it just sends player location to a server and even if two remote players have the same character, they can map the movement onto another. If one drops out, they revert the game to a computer controlled player. These can even be offset by time so they'd store where the player went and whether they used weapons and if the new player takes them out, it just blends the actions together. This way their AI is essentially human and they can match players to other player skill levels. It wouldn't even need to track data in real-time, just at the start and end of a level.
Donkey Kong is another game they can make in the run style but this is where the gesture inputs would help so you could do rolling and other actions.