What did Nintendo play when Mario ran into the iPhone?

July 02, 2024

At the Apple conference on Wednesday, Nintendo Design Master and Shigeru Miyamoto, the father of Mario, surprisingly announced the news that Nintendo's latest mobile game, Super Mario Run, will be exclusively on the App. Store.

"Super Mario Run" is not much different from other parkour games. Its main feature is that it can be operated with one hand, but also with two PKs, and supports the use of the Internet throughout the world. Of course, due to its inherent "Mario Aura" and "Nintendo Aura," it will undoubtedly become one of the hottest Parkour games in the App Store. “Super Mario Run may recapture people’s concern for Pokémon Go.”

For several years, Nintendo’s investors have been urging them to enter the mobile game industry. And why did Nintendo finally decide to bring "Mario" to the iPhone at this time?

"Nintendo" is a familiar and unfamiliar name for many people. Many of the company's original games carry memories of our childhood, Mario, Tetris, and these games accompany us through the great entertainment of our childhood. Mario is dressed in work clothes and wears a red cap. It's a water pipe. He can run, jump, can top out gold, and save the princess. We also know that there are red and white machines, gold handles, and cards are often blown, and the game is very fun.

Speaking of the NES, this is the first generation of home consoles released by Nintendo. Since its introduction in 1983 and the suspension of production in 2003, it has shipped 62.91 million units worldwide. According to foreign media data, in 1990, 30% of American households had NES hosts. While the United States experienced "Atari Shock" as a result of the video game industry's Great Depression, red and white machines laid the foundation for the modern video game industry. Nintendo became the pioneer of the modern game industry and established the standards of modern video games in many aspects.

However, despite Nintendo's ability to develop original game software and its strong celebrity IP appeal, it is hard to hide the fact that the WiiU sales platform of this generation has slumped. The sluggish sales of WiiU consoles has become a stumbling block to monopoly game development. Due to the lack of support from third-party developers, hardware sales are low, and the lack of hardware sales has also made Nintendo lack the enthusiasm to continue to develop WiiU exclusive games. This has created a vicious circle.

The continued monopoly of gaming machine hardware has made little sense in the rapid upgrade of hardware performance. With conventional handles, other host/PC hardware with sufficient performance is already sufficient for players. Nintendo only needs to use its original software development capabilities and powerful star IP to drive the game business forward. Pokémon Go's big fever is enough to illustrate this point. In hardware, innovation may no longer be able to create a niche market, and the software may It is the way to save Nintendo.

At the same time, Nintendo has been sticking to the principle of “do not do mobile games” and is very resistant to the mobile game business. However, as the situation of its game consoles becomes increasingly difficult, investors can not help but begin to question Nintendo’s strategy of focusing on the game console business at all costs. In order to protect the console business, Nintendo has previously refused to launch its popular role in mobile games, the strategy led to the company's continuous operating loss. In July of this year, Nintendo’s revenue fell by 31.3% and it lost 5.1 billion yen.

Nintendo has brought the world a golden age of handhelds, but all this is based on a period when smartphones are not widely available. Users want to play mobile games, there is no other choice than the handheld, but after the emergence of the iPhone, the entire market has changed, just as smart phones occupy the mp3, camera features, take away the PC user's time, the handheld also Inevitably declined. When users find that they can play cheap games or even "free games" on their mobile phones, even if they don't play games, they will use their mobile phones to swipe and brush their Facebook books. The user's attention and fragmentation time have long been quiet. Transfer.

Now, Nintendo seems to have finally listened to the demands of investors to enter the mobile game market. The cooperation with Apple and the introduction of its most successful IP Mario into the Apple Store may mean that Nintendo finally acknowledges that tapping the commercial potential of its existing IP is a clever way to help the company get out of the trap compared to sticking to its own console and platform.

It is worth mentioning that the late Nintendo President Iwatani once said in an interview with the media in 2014 that “the smart phone market will be more competitive than the host market. Nintendo will not become a pure software company in the future, the hardware is still Its main market." Perhaps, Nintendo's move into the mobile game market is only to use its own IP to accumulate user groups, attract advertising, and get rid of the current state of the losses.

Anyway, catching the Apple Express, it is an indisputable fact that Nintendo's stock has soared by 28%. This game company has become one of the biggest winners in Apple's new conference.

Via theverge