Nintendo may not be calling it quits on the home console front just yet, but there’s certainly no denying that the famed Japanese company has been making a big push this year to increase its presence in the mobile market. With the Wii U having failed to capture interest and falling flat since its launch back in 2012, one could argue that it only makes sense that the Big N has opted instead to focus on other areas of its business, i.e. the still-very-much-successful 3DS and, of course, mobile games.
Enter Super Mario Run, an auto-running platformer being developed exclusively for mobile platforms that was announced during Apple’s annual conference last month.
Nintendo may not be directly responsible for Niantic’s perhaps short-lived craze Pokemon GO, but nonetheless, the company’s president Tatsumi Kimishima is hoping that Super Mario Run will replicate its popularity when it hits the ground running in December. Speaking to Bloomberg (via IGN), he said:
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.
According to Kimishima, Nintendo has already recorded a huge surge of interest for Super Mario Run, with more than 20 million people having registered to receive release date notifications. As per IGN, if one analyst’s projections are correct, the title will easily hit 1 billion downloads on release.
Super Mario Run comes to iOS this December, with an Android version expected at some point in the future.
