After a brief disappearance, Super Mario Run is now back on the App Store. Earlier we reported that Nintendo's first major smartphone game had been pulled from Apple's storefront. No reason for its temporary removal has been given by Nintendo.
Pulling up Super Mario Run's iOS update history though, points at two very recent versions.Yesterday's 3.0.2 and today's 3.0.3 update state "bug fixes" were made and nothing else.
This isn't the first time a publisher has removed its games from the App Store. In the past, the likes of EA had removed its Dead Space and Mass Effect Infiltrator titles while more recently, 2K had pulled BioShock from iOS too. Thankfully, Nintendo's removal of Super Mario Run seems to be far from permanent at this time.
During Nintendo’s financial earnings report, the company has said the game has been downloaded almost 150 million times across iOS and Android. Incidentally, it’s still available for download via the Google Play Store.
In January, it was revealed that Super Mario Run was downloaded 78 million times with around five percent paying for the full version, translating to close to four million.
Revenue from the game "did not meet our expectations," Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima said speaking to Asia Nikkei in March. Previously it was reported that the game's gross revenue hit $30 million in two weeks.
At the time, the company isn’t planning to focus freemium games completely, citing its success with Fire Emblem: Heroes being an outlier.
"We honestly prefer the Super Mario Run model,” a senior company official said to Asia Nikkei in March.
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