Nintendo was happy how Super Mario Run has fared during its first week. However, recent data show that the game fared unsatisfactorily more than what Nintendo had expected.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, only three percent of those who downloaded the game bought the premium version of the game which is priced at $9.99. They acquired the data from Newzoo, a research firm which focuses on the gaming industry.

The numbers say that the total Super Mario download is around 90 million, the three percent of which is 270,000. Multiply that to $9.99 and you get around $27 million in sales which is not bad. However, if you look at it in view of the total downloads, Nintendo lost a lot: around $63 million.

Before launching Super Mario Run in December, experts had projected that the sales during the first week would be around $100 million but that didn't happen. So what went wrong? Why didn't the downloads failed to translate into cash?

Some speculate that the biggest reason why a lot of those who downloaded the free version did not push through with their purchase was because of the lack of free play. Nintendo did not take into consideration that the behavior of mobile gamers is different than console gamers. Normally, mobile gamers want to have a taste and feel of the game first before they decide whether to purchase the premium version or not. Aside from that, there are a lot of games on the Apple store that are much cheaper and better than Super Mario Run.

Thus, if Nintendo wants to dominate the mobile market and for its future games to fare well, it has to consider giving more free-to-play content. In fact, many mobile games have reaped satisfactory financial rewards using this method.