Why are there no Super Mario games for the iPhone?
Update: Shigeru Miyamoto announced at Apple's September 7, 2016 iPhone 7 keynote that Nintendo's first full mobile game will be Super Mario Run. Nintendo began releasing mobile apps for smartphones and tablets in 2016, but it's first app was not a game. Instead the company released a social networking title called, Miitomo.
Super Mario Run will be available in December 2016, and it will be the first Super Mario game released for mobile devices. You can read below about Nintendo's reluctance to bring its popular characters to mobile devices.
Nintendo refuses to make games for iOS or Android devices. Nintendo’s Chief, Satoru Iwata said in 2011 that he will never consider making games for mobile devices like the iPhone. Nintendo is a hardware company, that also happens to make games. This means Nintendo will only make games for its own consoles, and not other devices. Nintendo has stuck with this philosophy even in 2013. Here is Nintendo developer Takashi Tezuka's response when asked how he felt about the idea of Mario being on the iPhone.
“We can definitely make a Mario game that’s touch screen only. It wouldn't be a 2D side-scrolling Mario platformer, but I think we can definitely make games maybe in the vein of Mario vs. Donkey Kong or something like that. I think that’s definitely possible. Would we make that for another platform? No. Of course not. It would be on a Nintendo platform. But it’s definitely something we could do. It just wouldn’t be a 2D side-scrolling platformer.”
Comments
Scott replied on Permalink
I agree with Iwata.
Mario on iPhones would cripple the series with senseless limitations. Even the 2D Mario games (which are the simplest of Mario games) these days are multiple Gigabytes in size, due to something known as quality. I doubt anybody would want a game such as Mario to be whittled-down and have its soul sucked out by the cheap nature of "gaming" the iPhone and other smartphones boast, unless they lack the integrity to respect the common sense of the evolution and development of a long-running video game series instead of hindering it just for five minutes enjoyment or to shut kids up in long car rides.
By the way, Nintendo are not a hardware company. They are strictly a gaming company. The only devices they make are gaming consoles, the only software they release is games, and if once in a blue moon they ever release an app, they don't charge money for it.
If you want to play Mario then support Nintendo's own systems, and buy a 3DS or a Wii U. You'll notice how much quality those games have, and you'lL understand why they are so expensive in comparison to Smartphone games. Stop cheaping out.
Anonymous replied on Permalink
App Store has several good games similar to Mario, Incredible Jack, for example :)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/incredible-jack/id586208591