Nintendo's Super Mario Run, the portly plumber's first official outing on mobile devices, has been downloaded over 78 million times. Of those 78 million, 40 million were in the first four days of the game hitting the iOS App Store, while five percent (roughly four million people) paid the one-off £8/$10 fee to unlock the full version.

Super Mario Run's success has transformed Nintendo's mobile/IP licensing business, generating revenues of ¥10.6 billion (£75 million, $93 million) for the nine-month period ending December 31 2016, compared to ¥4.4 billion (£30 million, $38 million) in 2015, according to its latest financial report. Super Mario Run has since fallen off the App Store charts but is due for release on Android in March.

Despite Nintendo's promising start in mobile, Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima told reporters that Super Mario Run's conversion rate (that is, the number of players that opted to pay for the full version) fell below the company's double-digit expectations. Hopes are high for its next mobile game, Fire Emblem Heroes, which is due for release on Android and iOS on February 2. Its Animal Crossing mobile game has now been pushed back to "the next fiscal year," which could be as late as March 2018.

As for the rest of the company, Nintendo reported a ¥64.7 billion (£456million, $569 million) profit on revenues of ¥174.3 billion (£1.2 billion, $1.5 billion) for the quarter ending December 31. Operating profit reached ¥32.3 billion yen (£227 million, $284 million). Profits were largely driven by the success of Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon for the 3DS, which have clocked in combined sales of 14.69 million since launch in November. Super Mario Maker for 3DS has also sold more than one million copies since launch.

"Pokemon did exceptionally well," Kimishima told reporters. "But we’re also trying to sell more of other titles and weren't able to do that."

Both games helped drive hardware sales of the 3DS, which hit 6.45 million units for the nine month period ending December 31, a 10 percent year-on-year increase. 3DS software sales were also up for the same period, rising 20 percent year-on-year to 46.78 million units. Unsurprisingly, Wii U continued to slide, with hardware sales of 760,000 units (down 75 percent year-on-year), and software sales of 12.48 million units (down 45 percent year-on-year).

While the quarterly results largely exceeded analyst expectations, Nintendo cut its operating profit forecast to ¥20 billion (£141 million, $175 million) from ¥30 billion yen (£211 million, $263 million), which it blamed on poor software downloads for its consoles. However, projected income from investments and a weaker yen allowed Nintendo to almost double its net profit forecast to ¥90 billion (£634 million, $790 million).

Nintendo is hopeful that its next device—the handheld-console hybrid Nintendo Switch—will boost profits. Nintendo expects to sell two million units by the end of March, with the device said to be profitable from day one. Feedback on the Switch has been mixed, with many praising the hardware design but lamenting the launch line-up as well as the whole concept of a hybrid console. Questions also remain around the future of the 3DS, although Nintendo has promised that it won't be replaced in the near future.

"You can tell customers have huge expectations based on how Switch reservations are doing," Kimishima said. "We want to increase production as much as we can."