Mobile Design Lessons from “Super Mario Run”
Super Mario Run is a highly anticipated first ever mobile game that is designed and published by Nintendo. With such high anticipation, it is no wonder it broke the record of highest number of downloads since its launch on the Apple App Store, getting 40 millions downloads within a short span of 4 days.
With such a high number of downloads, for any free-to-play mobile games, this should easily translate to a great amount of revenue with a conservative estimate based on say 20% 3-day retention rate and a daily ARPPU of $20 with a 2% pay rate, that will means approx. $3 million of revenue per day.
But, that is not the revenue that Nintendo is receiving all due to the design of how “Super Mario Run” is monetized.
With this, here are some design lessons we need to learn from “Super Mario Run.”
Monetization Design for Mobile Games
“Super Mario Run” was released on the App Store as a Free app. After downloading the game, you play for about 15 minutes; everything is good. The game is really well polished and the gameplay is designed for casual players which forms the majority of the mobile game market. Then, after completing the 3rd level of the first world 1–3, you entered the 4th level and there comes a notification that in order for you to unlock the rest of the content, you have to pay $9.99 through in-app purchase.
This is where everything that is great about “Super Mario Run” starts to go down south. First of all, for a game that is so well-polished and the gameplay is also fairly well-designed for challenge and replay ability. There is nothing wrong with charging 10 bucks for the game. The problem comes from the fact that the game was initially released as a free-to-play game, which demands a certain set of expectation from anyone who decides to download the game to try it out, only to find that they can play no further than the first 3 levels of the game. This is where most players leave the game without ever opening again. This represent 97% of the people who has downloaded the game.
All in all, “Super Mario Run” has clocked in an estimate of $30 million, not a small figure but considering that Super Mario Run is an online game, there will be an upkeep of server cost every month to keep the game running yet there is no means to get in more revenue since the players are only required to purchase the game once.
Nintendo would have probably be better off with a offline version of the game and selling it straight off as a premium paid game which leaves a longer tail of revenue stream for Nintendo with each sale past the breakeven point returning pure profit instead of what they are having now.
That being said, there is still good design lessons to be learnt from “Super Mario Run” for anyone who is designing for mobile UX.
Mobile UX Design for Mobile
One of the key selling point for the design of Super Mario Run is that the game can be played with just one hand. This is shown by Shigeru Miyamoto himself with the video of him introducing the game.
In the video, you can see how he can play the game with one hand while doing other things with his other free hand such as eating a hamburger or lifting hand weights. This might seems quite common for a endless runner game, where the character in the game moves in a single direction automatically and the player has only one action that can be done with a single tap or swipe such as Flappy Birds or Temple Run. On further examination, you can find more in-depth design details that is placed within Super Mario Run to achieve the one-hand design.
Look at the following screenshots from Super Mario Run.
Did you notice anything unusual? Let me give you a hint, let’s say you are currently reading this post on your mobile app, and you are done with this article and wants to return to your reading list. Where is the back button located? Then look at the above screenshots again and you will realize, most of the key navigational buttons such as closing a window, going back to the previous menu and main navigational menu buttons are all located at the bottom of the screen. Even the popup browser for My Nintendo, the browser navigation bar is located at the bottom instead of the conventional top bar design that even most mobile web design is currently using.
By obtaining this design, the user experience on the mobile is greatly enhanced as the majority of the time where the interactions are made, they are all accessible on the bottom of the screen which made single hand navigation possible.
Conclusion
From the business point of view, “Super Mario Run” had a series of bad decisions made. On the user experience design point of view, “Super Mario Run” made some unconventional but essential designs to the UI/UX for mobile users that I can see being used as a reference for future implementation for anything mobile, be it mobile applications or mobile web design.
I hope this article has been useful to you and feel free to contact me if I can be of any help to you.
Written by Kris Lee. Edited by Dave Dhanbeer.
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