After a long time of making games for their own platforms, Nintendo finally entered the more popular mobile gaming market with another big title this month — Super Mario Run(SMR) on the App Store. Being one of the most well-known IP in gaming ever and by taking over the App Store with its promotions, it would have been a surprise if it hadn’t received the amount of downloads it has received so far.

The Release

Free download on the App Store and of course, breaking all the records on the App Store till date, this game was downloaded 40 million times in the first 4 days of its launch.

That one catch

There was one small thing about this free game which wasn’t clear during all the promotions so far — It’s a ‘Try and Buy’ model and not a ‘Free-to-play’ game like the hundreds of others which launch every other day on the App Store.

You get to play the initial 3 levels of the game for free and once you reach the boss fight in the World-1, you have to pay $9.99 as an in-app purchase to access further content.

The result?

Source: App Annie

Such Hate. Much 1-Star Ratings. Wow!

In addition to many users complaining about how this is not the actual Mario (For which I think there will always be an unhappy group when any old IP is remade so it doesn’t matter), mainly it was this ‘Try and Buy’ model that didn’t really go well with the majority. The ~50% of the ratings which are 1-star are primarily about being ‘Try and Buy’ and also for requiring a working internet connection to play even the single player aspect of the game.

While the irritation of having active internet connection all the time is understandable, such an immense amount of negative reviews for asking money was not really expected.

But why such negativity? It all comes to what the users have been trained to expect. With a game available for free download, there were certain expectations that were set up. When the game didn’t match up to these expectations, the reviews are where these users turned to for venting out their annoyances.

Everything is Freemium!

Freemium is a pricing strategy by which a product or service (typically a digital offering or application such as software, media, games or web services) is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for proprietary features, functionality, or virtual goods. — Wikipedia

‘Try and Buy’ was how the games were available of the App Store before the ‘Freemium’ fever came in. It was common to have a ‘Lite’ version of the app free to download and you could pay for the full version if in case you like it. With the advent of In-App-Purchases(IAP), the trend changed, there were games letting you have the complete version for free but you could pay through micro-transactions in order to progress faster. It turned out that this form of monetization was more effective and soon everyone turned to Freemium.

Source: App Annie

The Freemium model has been so successful that today, in the Top 100 Grossing Apps on the App Store(US), there is only one paid game. Rest 99 apps are all free to download which monetize through IAPs.

Freemium would mostly mean that a user is never locked out of the content that is available to consume. This trend has made the users hope freemium to work in a certain way and when SMR did a different kind of freemium, it wasn’t really expected. It was a ‘Free To Start’ instead of ‘Free To Play’ and this didn’t go well with the audience.

Weak on-boarding

In a game which requires you to pay for further content, you can expect your players to convert when they have experienced enough of the content which leaves them with a positive feeling. With SMR, the content offered for free wasn’t enough and very short. Also, once the payment gate is reached, the cost of the IAP is the next point of friction.

‘Micro’ transaction of $9.99

Micro-transactions are usually ‘micro’ for a reason and $9.99 is not one in any sense.

While it can be argued that since the complete game is available after paying this amount, it is still high compared to the amount of content which it gives you. Giving the complete game to play after the purchase is a very good thing as it will let your payers enjoy the game without any interruptions. However, the amount of content offered with this purchase should seem worthwhile. SMR didn’t seem to give enough content for the price it was asking.

And how much was the content offered? This brings me to the next point below.

6 Worlds = 24 Levels = Full game

After paying the price, 24 levels is all the game offers for the full version. I haven’t played these levels yet and before making the purchase, I can’t really judge how time consuming or engaging the 21 extra levels would be. For a player who has reached the end of the 3rd freely available level in the first session itself, it would seem like a very short game overall.

There are counter points to this argument which would be that the levels can be played multiple times to better your score and there could be more levels planned which could release soon and be available for these paying players.

For the former, yes, the same levels can be repeated multiple times and since the level design is very smart, it would be an interesting challenge to go back and improve your score in each level. Still, how long would a player keep repeating the same level, even if the difficulty is high. For the latter point, these new levels are not available yet and for a player it is still only a 24 level game.

If we compare this game to one of the famous Freemium games, Candy Crush Saga, it released with about 100 levels (Current level count being above 2000) and the transactions were actually ‘micro’ in nature which made the players see the worth in paying for it.

Does it matter?

Irrespective of all the visible hate through the low ratings, this celebrated IP would have certainly made many people pay for this game.

Since Mario is a popular brand, even if we consider a conversion rate of 5% [As compared to the general consideration of 2%], with a $9.99 revenue per paying user, SMR would have made at least $2 million in the first 4 days.

No doubt with the fans of the franchise paying, it would have made up lot of money, but in the long run, when the non-enthusiast cohort of players will be downloading the game, it would be tough for them to convert. This also can be noticed in the decline in the purchasing population that is seen in the first few days itself.

Nintendo still doesn’t need to worry right now as a user who wouldn’t pay $10 is also very likely to not pay if it was for $5 or $2 instead. However, on the flip side, there was also a potential to get the user to pay more than $10 if there was an opportunity to do so. Thus, in this case, besides taking the ire of all the frustrated players with the low ratings, they have probably left money on the table by limiting the purchase as well.

To conclude

SMR is a new (or maybe refurbished) version of monetization model implemented by Nintendo. While some would say that it has screwed it up, and I might agree to it, we can only wait and watch to see how it unfolds.