Nintendo finally released mobile title Super Mario Run to Android devices this week after launching on iOS in December 2016. And despite the game having not been as much of a financial success to date as fellow mobile release Fire Emblem Heroes, Nintendo apparently prefers Mario’s pricing model over Fire Emblem’s more aggressive one.
“Heroes’ is an outlier,” a senior company official told Nikkei. “We honestly prefer the Super Mario Run model.”
That model involves the first few levels of Super Mario Run being playable for free with the remaining levels being locked behind a $9.99 paywall. Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima admitted that the game’s earnings “did not meet our expectations.”
Meanwhile, Fire Emblem Heroes, with its traditional mobile freemium pricing structure requiring players to buy additional playable characters has been very profitable. Nikkei believes that the concern with this model is that its overuse could become harmful to the incredible value of the characters in Nintendo’s various IPs.
MORE NEWS
- Former Mass Effect Dev Explains Why Andromeda’s Animations Are So Bad
- World of Warcraft Patch 7.2 Takes Us Back to Broken Shore, Gets a New Trailer
- JonTron Responds to His Removal from Yooka-Laylee
