Nintendo Working to Make Super Mario Run as Popular as Pokemon Go

Go Mario go.

By Matt Porter

Tatsumi Kimishima, president of Nintendo, has bold intentions going into the launch of Super Mario Run.

Super Mario Run is an upcoming autorunner game coming to iOS which was announced during last month's Apple Event. It'll be coming to 150 countries on iPhone and iPad some time this December.

Kimishima told Bloomberg: "In terms of expectations, we all saw what happened when we delivered Pokemon Go. And honestly I was quite surprised by it myself. There's no doubt that more people are using smartphones to play games. And as this time we're using Mario, that's a very important intellectual property for us. And that's what Miyamoto's team is working on now: making sure it spreads out just as quickly as Pokemon Go."

"More than 20 million people have already registered to receive notifications when the game is available," he continued. One analyst recently said the game will easily hit 1 billion downloads.

"In terms of the game itself, you can download it and play a certain part of it, and then pay a fixed price and then play it over and over as many times as you want without having to pay anything extra," said Kimishima. "And that should give peace of mind that kids can play it. And we're hoping that will help it become more popular."

Nintendo's president also talked about the decision to launch a game on phones. "Our main business is the hardware/software business. In addition, our smartphone business has helped sell a lot of our existing packages. And it has really proved our original thesis: by releasing our software on the smartphone, it positively impacts our existing hardware and software business. And that's precisely the synergy effect we were expecting. And as that has been proven correct, we have more confidence."

Last month IGN sat down with Shigeru Miyamoto to discuss Super Mario Run, and we learned 11 interesting things.

Matt Porter is a freelance writer based in London. Make sure to visit what he thinks is the best website in the world, but is actually just his Twitter page.

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