Oh sure, but that was an even clumsier work-around from the pre-in-app-purchases days. I’d be very surprised to see Nintendo (or anyone else) still doing that.
I think it will be interesting to see how the game works. I am going to assume it is very similar to the Rayman run games, which are spectacularly good mobile platformers. Those sold for around 3-5 bucks a piece on the app store. Great games though. 10 bucks is a bit steep when compared to the competition, but if the quality is there, I think people will pay.
Cynically, I think the App Store has proven most people won’t pay for quality when there are free “good enough” alternatives. What Nintendo has going for them is their name.
Yeah, look at Threes and 2048.
Get ready for Super Blario Run.
Most of my kids iPad games won’t work without an internet connection. Dumb stuff like Cartoon Network arcade and Ninja Turtles fighting games that has no reason to go online. I think this is normal in the iOS world.
Yeah, we’re becoming the dinosaurs on this. It’s painful because I was hoping for so long that the industry wouldn’t go this way, but I’ve come to the realization that we’ve lost. Most people don’t mind always-online requirements for gaming.
It’s pretty shitty since the appeal is to play it as a time killer where you may well not have wifi access, or good LTE coverage. Agreed. If it was a PC game I wouldn’t be so bothered, but for a mobile game? Kind of idiotic.
It’s increasingly normal, and it’s why I play fewer and fewer mobile games. At least half the time that I would normally be mobile gaming, I have no signal (or it would be too expensive to use it). It’s also terrible design from a UX perspective and it contributes to ridiculous load times. One game I have for a while forced a download of basically all the game data every single time you opened the app.
You say most people, but Nintendo’s official explanation for this is that they’re hoping to release in 150 countries. How many of those countries have affordable unlimited data plans?
I don’t know, but apparently Nintendo thinks it’s not an issue.
I wager that anywhere the majority of smartphone owners are glued to Facebook and Twitter is going to be an okay market for this.
It’s not like it’s streaming the game over 3G. It sends a confirmation bit to Nintendo’s server, gets a thumbs up, and goes about its business. The data will be negligible.
Look at sales for Pokemon Go. That required an online connection and it didn’t stop the money train. Suggesting that Nintendo will be materially hurt by this decision is silly. They will make lots of money.
I live in the country, about fifteen miles from the nearest town with a population higher than a thousand, and have good to great LTE signal almost everywhere I go within an hour of my home. Even in places where I can’t make a phone call, I’ll generally have great signal for data. This isn’t quite as big an issue as you guys are making it out to be.
That said, iPad users are kind of boned, but it doesn’t seem like tablets are the intended platform.
Reading the article, the piracy concern is spot-on. The various protections against IAP-spoofing get broken all the time with games that don’t require a constant network connection, and a lot of people have a massive hate-boner for Nintendo, pirating their games out of spite or because they feel like they’re entitled to play them without spending money for them. I’m sure Nintendo doesn’t want to deal with that audience on yet another platform, to say nothing of the casual pirates who grab anything and everything that shows up on their piracy platform of choice.
I still don’t understand how this will be sold. I’ve read of a demo, I’ve read of an unlock, I’ve read of multiple versions.
Best case scenario: Full version is an outright purchase for $9.99 in the App Store, which will allow me to do the family sharing thing.
Worst case scenario: There’s only a free version for download in the App Store, with a single IAP unlock after the “demo” completes itself. IAP does not get family shared, so I’ll have to log into my App Store account on my other family members’ iOS devices and restore purchases.
Guess I’ll have to wait until next Thursday to find out.
24 levels feature in the game at launch, with the first four available to try free. This is as good a time as any to detail Super Mario Run’s monetisation strategy - which is a simple one-off payment of £7.99 to unlock the full game. There are no free-to-play mechanics, no in-game currency to buy and nothing else you can pay to gain access to. It’s a fair way to offer the base experience for free, allow as many people as possible to try the game’s opening levels across all modes, and not require you pay more at any other point in the future
It’s a free app with an in-app-purchase to unlock the rest of the levels.
What you heard about a demo was probably referring to the fact that starting yesterday, there’s a demo on display devices in physical Apple Stores.
iOS devices in brick-and-mortar Apple Stores around the world are running playable demos of Nintendo’s highly anticipated Super Mario Run from today, December 7, for those eager to get an early taster of the new game.
Thanks for the clarification. It’s super annoying, but I do have a workaround – the old fashioned way of sharing apps before Apple introduced family sharing. It just gets annoying when there’s an app update and you need to keep logging in and out of the various iTunes accounts to get it to download by the account that initially purchased it.
How is the last response in this thread 10 days ago? This came out last week!
Anyone bite? Any impressions?
What is iOS? As far as I know, this comes out in 2017 for the rest of us.
It’s fun!
There’s no big surprise from the previews and review coverage, it’s a well done Mario game adapting some mechanics of the infinite runner. It’s worth my $10, it’s worth everyone’s free download to try and judge for themselves.
I did hear that even worse than the In-App-Purchase method of unlocking, restores of that purchase are tied to a Nintendo ID (not the Apple ID it was purchased on). Which seems super weird, and I’m surprised Apple allows that.
I got the demo but I haven’t paid for it yet. Tying the purchase to a Nintendo ID seems ridiculous, that can’t be true.
I like it quite a lot, but only the game itself, not the rally shit, which is just frustrating.
However, the game is really neat and if I get an itunes gift card for Christmas, I’ll certainly unlock the rest of the game so I can get through the levels. Fantastic little time killer.