Nintendo announced today that they were taking the Super Mario Bros. franchise outside of the comfortable home that has been Nintendo-built consoles for the first time since Mario Teaches Typing 2 on PC with Super Mario Run. Super Mario Run is — you guessed it — an endless runner game but starring everyone’s beloved, plucky plumber,Mario. Super Mario Run was announced for iOS at Apple’s big iPhone 7 unveiling and it left Android users wondering if they too would be privy to a Mario platformer for their smartphone.
The answer is complicated. It felt like Nintendo would never branch out in the very hungry mobile market, but Miyamoto has finally sorta seen the light. Nintendo’s first project, a toes-dipped-in-the-water experiment called Miitomo, was fun before everyone moved onto Pokemon Go, and showed Nintendo that everyone wants to play Nintendo games, just not everyone wants to buy Nintendo consoles. So Nintendo is releasing Super Mario Run, but it’s only on iOS… for now.
The game will be released for the iPhone and iPad come December, but all that we know about Android comes to us from IGN, where Nintendo said, “not in 2016.” Nintendo likes the stability and closed nature of the iOS platform, which should come to a shock to no one who understands Nintendo and how they do business. Of course, while the iPhone is popular, Android devices still outnumber iOS devices by quite a large margin at this point. Hopefully, Android users can look forward to some charming Nintendo goodness in early 2017.
(Via IGN)