Nintendo’s first mobile game, Super Mario Run, was enormously popular — but that doesn’t mean it was a success for the company. During its most recent earnings report, Nintendo revealed that Mario Run has been downloaded 200 million times, 90 percent of which came from outside of Japan. However, Nintendo says that despite these big numbers, the game has “not yet reached an acceptable profit point.” While Nintendo didn’t reveal any specifics with regards to conversion rates, a big sticking point for many with Super Mario Run was its comparatively large price point; it’s free to download, but requires a one-time fee of $9.99 to unlock the whole game. Nintendo’s problem is that they don’t want to devalue their software, but Apple does; the entire App Store is geared around devaluing apps as much as possible. Hence the race to the bottom in app prices we see. Nintendo wants a hefty profit from every sale, but that’s not how App Store profits work anymore: you have to entice users with free apps to get lots of downloads and then entice them more with relatively low in-app purchases or freemium shit. It’s a losing situation for them.