In a press release today, Nintendo detailed some of the App Store records Super Mario Run broke in the days immediately following its release last week. TechCrunch reports that:
…the company says that in addition to its top ranking in the “free” chart of the App Store in 140 different global markets (of the 150 where it’s available), it’s also now in the top 10 ranking for best grossing games in 100 different markets.
The press release also includes a quote from Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing confirming the record-smashing downloads.
Minecraft fans got an early present under the tree today. Mojang, the maker of Minecraft: Pocket Edition on iOS, announced that it is releasing a big update to the game today as well as an all-new Apple TV version.
my personal highlights have to be The Ender Dragon (because I’m Welsh and love dragons), The End (all dragons deserve to have a fitting home to relax in), and the Dragon’s Breath potion (it’s delicious). This update also brings this year’s Festive Mash-Up Pack including all kinds of holiday themed looks.
The Ender Update is currently rolling out and should be available in the App Store soon. In the meantime, Mojang has put together a preview trailer highlighting the update and another featuring the Festive Mash-Up Pack that you can watch:
Mojang also announced that Minecraft will be released on the Apple TV today. Originally mentioned onstage at Apple’s October MacBook Pro event, the game will be available for $19.99. For a limited time the Apple TV version will include the following seven DLC add-ons for free: Holiday 2015, Town Folk, and City Folk skin packs, along with the Plastic, Natural, Cartoon, and Festive 2016 mash-ups.
The announcement of Super Mario Run for iOS was a big surprise during Apple’s September 7th iPhone event. It feels like hardly a week has gone by since then without some sort of news about the game.
The wait is finally over. As of a short time ago, Super Mario Run began rolling out worldwide on the App Store. The game features three modes, an endless runner-style mode in which you tap the screen to help Mario reach platforms, collect coins, and avoid enemies, a head-to-head competition mode called Toad Rally, and a building mode called Kingdom Builder. This gameplay video posted by Nintendo last week walks through each part of the game:
Super Mario Run requires a constant connection to the Internet. Nintendo says it implemented the feature to combat piracy of the game – a decision that has been roundly criticized as user-hostile in the days since the requirement was revealed.
The Super Mario Run marketing blitz has begun. With the launch of Super Mario Run on iOS just one week away, Shigeru Miyamoto was interviewed by The Verge and BuzzFeed News. The creator of Mario spoke at length with both publications about the game, Nintendo’s goals for it, and how it was made.
Miyamoto discussed the thought process behind Super Mario Run’s gameplay with The Verge:
“We felt that by having this simple tap interaction to make Mario jump, we’d be able to make a game that the broadest audience of people could play.”
“Kids are playing on devices that they’re getting from their parents when their parents are upgrading,” Miyamoto said. “We wanted to take an approach of how can we bring Nintendo IP to smart devices and give kids the opportunity to interact with our characters and our games.”
It’s a strategy that makes a lot of sense given the dominance of smartphones and rise of casual gaming.
Nintendo’s goal to make Super Mario Run a one-handed game necessitated designing it for portrait mode, which led to new opportunities for Nintendo’s creative team. Miyamoto told The Verge that:
“Once we did start to focus on the vertical gameplay and one-handed play, we were surprised at how much having that vertical space in a Mario game could add to the verticality of the game itself and how that added a new element of fun to Mario,” Miyamoto explains. “They’re all brand new levels that we created for this game, but because of the vertical orientation, it gave us a lot of new ideas for how to stretch the game vertically. I think it’s been maybe since the Ice Climbers days that we’ve had a game where you’re trying to climb a tower.”
Miyamoto also shared with BuzzFeed News that the inspiration for creating an “endless runner” style Mario game was influenced by fans who do speed runs through Mario and other games. You may have seen videos of speed runs; there is no shortage of them on YouTube. BuzzFeed explains that:
Watching online videos of these gamers’ astounding speed runs and other feats of gaming skill, Nintendo employees noticed that the gamers never let up on the D-Pad. Mario always kept running, and all of the skill came down to the incredible precision of the jumping. What if, the Nintendo braintrust reasoned, all players could have that experience?
In addition, Nintendo executive Reggie Fils-Aimé and Shigeru Miyamoto paid a visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night, demoing Super Mario Run and the Nintendo Switch console that is slated for release in March. If anyone wasn’t sure before, there is no doubt that Jimmy Fallon is a huge Nintendo fan and geek. This video is wonderful:
Reuters reports that Sony’s PlayStation division is working on ten mobile games, six of which will be released next year for iOS and Android. The games, which include Everybody’s Golf, will debut in Japan followed by other Asian countries. The Reuters report doesn’t indicate what plans, if any, Sony has for the games outside Asia.
According to Reuters the other games in the works for mobile release include PaRappa the Rapper and Arc The Lad. Kotaku also reports that Wild Arms is in development for mobile platforms. Kotaku’s coverage includes this preview video of Arc the Lad and Wild Arms from ForwardWorks:
Competition from mobile gaming continues to increase, so its not surprising that console vendors like Sony are following Nintendo’s lead by testing the smartphone waters.
With the Go series, Square Enix Montreal has carved out its own niche, creating something unique in the game development space. Studios often fall into one of two camps: on the one side you have the massive, 1,000-person teams that create blockbuster games, and on the other there are the tiny indie studios that build creatively ambitious games with few resources. Square Enix Montreal straddles the line between those two extremes. It has the resources of a big company, but the size and some of the creative freedom of an indie. It’s a studio that can make weird new games but attach them to hugely popular franchises.
It is great to see that Square Enix Montreal has found success in its series of Go games built on the larger franchises of Hitman, Tomb Raider and now Deus Ex. The first two Go mobile games, Hitman Go and Lara Croft Go, are genuinely great and feature a lot of creativity – so it is great to see they have continued to invest in this (critically-acclaimed) series with yesterday’s launch of Deus Ex Go. This is particularly the case when so many other large mobile game publishers are instead focusing on churning out what are largely uninspired free games with in-app purchases.
To that end, Webster notes in his story that Square Enix Montreal has made some indie hires that suggests it fully intends to stay the course on its current approach to mobile games:
Outside of Deus Ex Go, Square Enix Montreal isn’t saying what it’s working on right now. But the studio has made a few recent hires that hint at desire to keep the indie-like feeling it has carefully cultivated. Those pick-ups include Teddy Dief, an artist and designer best known for his work on the crowdfunded hit Hyper Light Drifter, and Renaud Bédard, the sole programmer on seminal puzzle-platformer Fez, who most recently worked at Below developer Capy Games in Toronto. Both were tempted to join by the idea of combining the creative freedom of an indie studio with the structure and resources of a big publisher.
Alto’s Adventure, one of my all-time favorite iOS games, is getting a couple fantastic features today. The first is a zen mode that lets you play as long as you want without having to restart when you crash. If you fall, you can simply pick yourself up and resume from right where you are. There also aren’t any collectables, removing all of the potentially stress-inducing aspects of the game. It’s just you snowboarding down the mountain and doing tricks. The new mode is accompanied by a soothing new soundtrack that fits well with the more relaxed feel of zen mode.
Alto’s Adventure also adds the ability to take snapshots of gameplay. Pausing the game by tapping the pause button in the lower left hand corner of the screen lets you enter photo mode.1 Once paused, you can pinch, zoom, and pan the scene to frame the shot and then take a snapshot that can be shared using the system share sheet.
Zen mode and the new photo feature enhance Alto’s Adventure by making it even easier to soak in the stunning visuals and soundtrack of the game. As much as I like the new features, though, I like that both are neatly tucked away in the interface so neither interferes with the way the original game works.
Version 1.3 of Alto’s Adventure is a free upgrade to existing customers. New customers can purchase Alto’s Adventure for $3.99 on the App Store.
If you don’t see a pause button, don’t worry, it’s there. The button just fades from view over time. ↩︎
Fascinating look at the second year of Monument Valley – particularly after a cameo on House of Cards and a promotion on the App Store:
Underwood turned out to be a great pitch man, one of several reasons why Monument Valley was actually more successful in its second year of existence, compared to the first. According to developer Ustwo, the game has been downloaded more than 26 million times to date, and more than 23 million of those downloads came in the second year after it released. “We’ve actually had to spend a lot of time maintaining the game,” says Dan Gray, head of studio at Ustwo Games, “and finding new opportunities for people to find out about it.”
For the second year in a row, Ustwo has released a detailed infographic that showcases how well the game performed on various platforms. While year one showed that it was still possible for a premium game to make money on mobile, year two shows just how huge of an audience you can reach by offering your game for free — the biggest reason behind _Monument Valley_’s enduring success wasn’t a fictional US president, it was the lack of a price tag.
The difference in downloads between the first and second year on iOS is remarkable, but even more impressive is the performance in China.
