If you want to see the doctor, you’d better hurry for an appointment. Dr. Mario, that is!
The worst performing of Nintendo’s mobile games on iOS, Nintendo has announced that it is shutting down Dr. Mario World, its update of 1990s puzzle game Dr. Mario. The game will be going offline on October 31 or November 1, depending on timezone. It launched in 2019.
This is the second of Nintendo’s games on iOS to shut down, with the first being the gamified social network Miitomo.
While Nintendo has had big success on mobile with some titles (Mario Kart World and Fire Emblem Heroes are big sellers), not everything it touches turns to commercial gold. The first Mario game on iOS, Super Mario Run, debuted to great acclaim in December 2016. However, its premium $9.99 model, which let players unlock the whole game for a one-off payment, didn’t rake in quite as much cash as Nintendo hoped for.
After this, Nintendo pivoted to embrace the freemium business model, with plenty of in-app payments. Dr. Mario World was one of these IAP-heavy titles. But for whatever reason it failed to catch on as hoped.
Data from app analytics platform Sensor Tower, published last year, showed that Dr. Mario World was by far the worst-performing Nintendo game. Of all Nintendo’s mobile revenue for the period reported, Dr. Mario World accounted for less than 1 percent. That’s not the stuff of long-term App Store success.
If you want to give Dr. Mario World a spin before it vanishes, you can download it from the App Store here. Despite its poor commercial performance, fans seem to like it. The game has a score of 4.6/5, based on more than 60,000 ratings.
Via: Touch Arcade
