Super Mario Run is right aorund the corner. I went to the NYC event where Miyamoto debuted it and I played it. I'm older so I wans't floored by its "newness" especially since aesthetically it is anything but new, but it was solid fun and without a doubt of the high teir class of iOS games, of which there are not many.

So, how does Nintendo handle it? It is online only to prevent piracy. Here is the defense we hear:

• SMR is a higher-quality mobile game with higher production costs than average mobile games
• SMR offers no in-app purchases or ads, and therefore 100% of their profit comes from the single intitial purchase of the game
• iOS has upwards of 60% piracy rate (Android has 95%)
• SMR is $10 (ten times more expensive than the average mobile game), logically it is far more likely to be pirated.
• Nintendo as a company has [likely] been greatly hurt by piracy in the past, specifically with regards to their portable platforms

A game worth playing is a game worth buying.

The main game is free to try.
If I like the free levels, I'll decide if the rest of the game is worth 8 bucks to me (reduced iTunes card). Otherwise I'll stop playing it and play some other good mobile game... still have to finish Rayman Fiesta Run and Rayman Adventures.

No, but I don't pirate games. People that do should be fined and penalized in other ways.

Well, here's a question. So it being online, how much data does it use? Also if you disconnect, do you get kicked out? Mobile isn't like wifi at home. Good reception isn't available everywhere and not every carrier/country has great internet. Also datacaps... In Canada specially where data is expensive paying $60 per month for 1gb of data and that is if you bring your own device. With contract, its a lot more.

I don't personally like when measures like this are kept in place. Piracy is a concern but that is a concern that will never go away and things like this will punish the legit users as well if implemented poorly. We have had countless companies continue to beat the drum of piracy on PC but we have seen many games such as the witcher 3 be successful without drm or games be successful with minimal amount of drm that doesn't require you to be online all the time.

So I am not going to judge this right now until I see all the details but I am not a fan of measures like this.

iOS piracy rate doesn't seem right. Even if it's right, which it isn't, Apple sold more than 1 billion iPhones. If 40% of them don't pirate, that means an audience of 400 million of iPhones owners willing to buy the game.

Keep in mind, someday in the future, assholes will pirate the game and get to play it offline and the ones who actually buy the game will not. I'll be playing the inferior version of the game, and I am ok with that for now. I am too hyped to care.

No need to defend a shitty practice just because it's Nintendo. "it was solid fun and without a doubt of the high teir class of iOS games, of which there are not many." Of course, mobile gaming sucks unless it's PoGo, Miitomo and Mario.

Super Mario Run isn't free? I thought it was. Haven't been that interested in the game to visit the app store on this tablet to find it out.

And how many of those one billion (Ios devices) are in use? If there's 300 million in active use, that's 880 million non-pirates, though the addressable userbase is only 120 million.

I would like to hear where you have these piracy percentages from and what they relate to. They seem absolute bullshit to me.

Let's go with a more meaningful statement:

"The growth of our services business accelerated during the quarter to produce record results, and our installed base recently crossed a major milestone of one billion active devices,"

This was reported by Apple in January 2016. The number included Macs, Watches, iPads and iPhones. 

Macs sell around 20 millions devices a year at most, and the Watch basically flopped.

I'll be generous and say Macs and Watchs amount to 200-300 millions active devices (they really don't). That means there were 700-800 millions ACTIVE iOS devices in January 2016.

By the end of 2016 Apple will have sold around 200 million more iPhones in 2016 alone, add that to the number of active devices number we got in January, and you will have around 900 millions active iOS devices. It can be a billion active iOS devices but let's go with the lower estimates. I am not gonna even bother and include the 2016 iPad/iPod touch sales.

Improtant to note that weeks after iOS 10 release, 60% of the userbase upgraded to it. The number NOW is naturally higher because iOS 10 was released months ago and every iPhone 7 sold ships with iOS 10 pre-installed. Why is iOS 10 important in this discusion? because there is no jailbreak for it, no jailbreak = no piracy. One can safely assume that 60-70% of the active install base are using iOS 10 and don't have the option to pirate in the first place.

According to Apple there were more than 1 billion Apple devices in active use in January.

They sold a lot more: 1033 million iPhone until September + 337 million iPads until September + more than 100 million iPod touch devices + the iOS devices of this quarter. Even if we ditch the 200 million iOS devices prior to 2012, more than 1.2 billion iOS devices were sold in the last 5 years.

I've seen somewhere that it will use 75MB per hour. It's not that much but I don't think that it is a good idea for mobile games to require internet connection.