Given the enormous success of the Mario franchise, it may surprise you to learn that the smartphone game Dr. Mario World, which was developed by Nintendo in association with Line Corporation, earned just $1.4 million within its first month of release, with around 7.5 million players installing the game on their devices.
While these numbers are hardly terrible, they’re still not exactly worth writing home about. The mediocre reviews likely played a role in the lackluster sales, with a 61% rating on Metacritic being significantly below what fans have come to expect from Mario’s outings.
To give you an idea of how these figures compare to other smartphone titles based on Nintendo properties, the following chart provided by Sensor Tower below shows Dr. Mario World coming fifth in terms of revenue. Even Dragalia Lost, which does not belong to a pre-existing franchise, earned more than twelve times as much, despite receiving fewer downloads.
However, it is also worth mentioning that Dr. Mario World has performed strongly when compared to other licensed puzzle games released on mobile devices, so even with the added bonus of the Mario brand, it was probably never going to generate as much as its more action-oriented counterparts. Most Mario fans wanting to experience the series on mobile services will probably stick with Super Mario Run, although we still expect Dr. Mario World to attract a healthy amount of new players over the coming weeks.
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