About 3% of Users Have Paid for Super Mario Run

Jelle Stap January 3, 2017

Nintendo recently launched their extremely successful app Super Mario Run for iOS which in its first 4 days passed 40 million downloads. However, the question remained of how many people would upgrade to the full version, which costs a $10 fee. In research published by the firm Newzoo (via The Wall Street Journal), only around 3% of users have paid.

Newzoo estimates that Super Mario Run has generated more than $30 million in gross revenue, which suggests about 3 million players have bought the full game. That is a little over 3% of the estimated 90 million downloads of the game.

While 3% might sound like a small amount, it’s more than the popular game, Candy Crush which comes in at 2%. However, both games have different ways of bringing in money. Super Mario Run is one big sum of money (upfront), while Candy Crush uses the typical freemium model which generates more revenue over time. Super Mario Run has already dropped to #7 on the top-grossing games charts, meanwhile, Candy Crush still remains at the top even after being released 5 years ago.

Of course, with the eventual launch on Android, Nintendo will begin collecting even more revenue and these stats will likely spike significantly. Nevertheless, it’s rather interesting to see how many users actually appreciate an app free to download but costs to play.