Nintendo: Super Mario Run Sales Didn't Meet Expectations

But the company still prefers its pricing model.

By Alex Osborn

The sales of Nintendo's mobile game Super Mario Run failed to live up to the company's expectations.

According to Nikkei, Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima said the revenue generated by the pay-once-to-unlock platformer, which launched last year for iOS and earlier this week for Android, "did not meet our expectations."

Meanwhile, Nintendo's strategy RPG Fire Emblem Heroes has a "freemium" price model, and has proven to be a massive money-maker for the company. Despite its success, however, Nintendo has no intention of shifting entirely to a free-to-play pricing scheme for all of its future mobile games.

According to a senior company official, Nintendo sees Fire Emblem Heroes as "an outlier" and they "honestly prefer the Super Mario Run model." Despite not meeting Nintendo's sales expectations, Super Mario Run reached 50 million downloads in late December.

Nintendo plans to release two to three mobile games every year going forward. While little is currently known about the company's upcoming Animal Crossing mobile game, the title is slated to launch sometime before the end of March 2018.

Alex Osborn is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter and subscribe to his YouTube channel.

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