Nintendo director and designer Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that the Mario game will not proceed to promote to the smartphone platform.
Nintendo previously released a series of games on mobile devices such as the iPhone, including a parkour game called “Super Mario Run”, in which players can control Mario to jump on various maps, dodge, collect gold coins and challenge BOSSes.
However, the game didn’t have many highlights in terms of commercial achievements, and received $60 million (about 413 million RMB at present) in the first year of release, which can only be described as a mediocre performance.
In an interview with Variety, Shigeru Miyamoto talked about mobile gaming and the future of Mario, confirming that mobile gaming will not be the main direction for the Mario IP.
Shigeru Miyamoto said, “First and foremost, Nintendo’s core strategy is a hardware and software integrated gaming experience, and the intuitiveness of the controls is part of the gaming experience. As we explored the opportunity to make a Mario game for cell phones, a more common and versatile device, it was a challenge to determine what that game should be. That’s why I served as the producer of Super Mario Run, so that I could transfer the Nintendo hardware experience to other smart devices. However, mobile gaming will not be the main future direction for Mario games.”
In fact, throughout 2020, only 3.24 percent of Nintendo’s revenue will come from “mobile and IP-related revenue,” which even includes licensing deals, with the majority of revenue coming from the Switch console platform.
In addition, Nintendo’s puzzle game “Dr. Mario World” was discontinued on November 1, 2021, and is the first handheld game of Nintendo to stop service.
