Speaking with Bloomberg, Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima revealed that his company has high expectations for the auto-running Mario mobile game. Having seen the success of Pokémon GO, Nintendo is working hard to make Super Mario Run just as popular just as quickly.

                  "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."

                 It would be really great if Super Mario Run would become as popular as Pokemon Go, but right now I'm not convinced that'll happen.

               Link: https://www.gamnesia.com/news/nintendo-is-working-to-make-super-mario-run-as-popular-as-pokemon-go

Mario is more popular than Pokémon, Mario has many succesful spin-offs while Pokémon spin-off games sell comparatively little. There are 3 Mario games on the 3DS alone that sold over 10 million. Super Mario Run won't be nearly as frontloaded as Pokémon Go was though, but it will have longer legs. It also won't become a cultural phenomenon because "endless" runners have been done many times before and while Pokémon Go's concept wasn't new Pokémon did make it mainstream.

Offcourse, Pokemon Go had huge impact on 3DS sales and sales of Pokeomon games, they want similar effect for Switch and Mario games.

And this is why Pokémon is more familiar to a lot, lot more people than Mario.

I don't think it will have the same initial frenzy, but I think it might have a similar level of stable performance.  However, I will be more interested to see what the synergy will be like between Mario Run and Nintendo's dedicated gaming business.

As long as it can increase the Mario games on the 3DS and on the Wii U...... Then I'll say that it is successful.

The problem is Mario Run has zero social aspects which means it will only get a fraction of the popularity. Another problem is that Pokemon Go already took the novelty of a Nintendo game on mobile. The IP that's used doesn't even matter. All subsequent Nintendo games on mobile will be less popular than both Pokemon Go and Mario run.

Maybe if Temple Run never existed.

But it'll make them lots and lots of money so who cares?

I don't think it's going to be a cultural phenomenon like PoGo was. Largely because it doesn't require you to go out and connect to people to play it.

You could spot PoGo players from a mile away and be interested in wtf they were doing, but someone just playing a Mario runner on their phone is not going to have the same free advertisement impact.

That being said I can see it doing huge numbers and having great legs due to word of mouth.

I think it has the potential to be popular, but not on he levels of Pokemon Go. They're just not really comparable.