Well, who DIDNT see this coming? Nintendo made a huge mistake by locking up mario run behind a pay wall. Mobile could still prove very useful for them, not only in terms of revenue, but in coverage and exposure. It will be intersting to see if they can convince some portion of the casual mobile market to buy a switch

The problem with Super Mario Run is that it had a poor monetization model. Users willing to spend could only spend a small amount. Mobile games that do well offer more premium content. Fire Emblem gives spenders the ability to spend what they want to, that's is why it is much more successful.

You gotta nickel-and-dime 'whales' when it comes to smartphone games. This seems to be the case anyways...

Well, I assume this means that they'll abandon the pay-to-play model in all of their future mobile games and instead just go with the free-to-play microtransaction route.

They still do, though, you just have to trick them into it and take advantage of their impatience.

Personally, I hate most free-to-play games as they often barely qualify as games and design themselves in a way that makes playing them without spending money unpleasant, so I hope Nintendo doesn't go that route entirely... still, they'll need to lower the entry costs, perhaps something like $5 instead of $10. Hitting double digits is suicide on the mobile market.

I don't think it hurt that Fire Emblem Heroes is coming around at a time where the franchise is at its most popular. Add in to the fact that while it's simple gameplay wise to its handheld/console counterparts, it's fun for casuals and the variety of characters is vast. Plus you're usually rewarded daily while logging in or playing the variety of modes so no pressure in paying...until you start having bad luck in summoning.

I haven't really played Mario Run after a few runs, but still play FE Heroes from time to time

That's the power of the gotcha style games. Hell, Ike and his band are the latest focus banner summons, which I'm certain will bring in a lot of revenue.

Makes sense, I'm sure a lot of people paid good money for those orbs

Why would most people spend $10 on what seems to be a very average game when they can get other average games for a fraction of that? Because it has "Mario" in the title?

No, Nintendo simply overvalued the brand relative to the average mobile consumer.

Beyond that, whomever was in charge of this project showed a poor understanding of the market. Most people don't spend much money at all on mobile games because there is an over-supply of titles without much to separate them.

The real money is in the smaller pool of people who spend hundreds of dollars on micro-transactions. The whales WANT to burn money but with the model Mario run uses, they're only have the same top end value as anyone else. That doesn't make any sense. It's like telling the high rollers at a casino that they can only bet $10 at a time when they want to bet $1000 with every roll of the dice.

Really, blaming the consumer for poor marketing is an exercise in futility. One thing I've learned in business is that the customer is always right about what they like. You can try to give them what YOU want to give them, sure, but it's your own fault if they're not interested.