Mario game sales leap after Super Mario Bros. film success

The Super Mario Bros. film has helped Nintendo rake in over $300 million from its royalties and smartphone business, and it's also had a direct affect on Mario game sales.

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Nintendo's transmedia plan has worked. The Super Mario Bros. movie is a smash success, helping Nintendo rake in millions and sparking massive interest in its games and content. While the company does want to make money from film royalties, the main goal with the Mario movie was to spread mass-market interest in Nintendo's video games (as if Nintendo, one of the most recognizable brands in history, needs help in this regard).

The success of the Super Mario Bros. movie has translated into a direct rise in Mario game sales. This was the biggest part of the plan all along--the hope was that the film would make consumers want to buy Switch consoles and Mario titles. Taking a look at Nintendo's latest Q2'24 earnings report, we can see that's exactly what happened.

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According to the figures provided by Nintendo, the company sold a whopping 6.22 million games in the Mario franchise from the SMB movie's release in April through September. This accomplishment is all the more impressive because all of the top-selling Mario games are catalog/evergreen titles, meaning they're not actually new games.

The figures don't even include Super Mario Wonder, the most recently released game on the Switch.

"In addition, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, released in April, had a positive impact on sales of Mario related titles. Sales of other titles also continued to grow steadily, bringing the total number of million-seller titles during this period to 16, including titles from other software publishers,"Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said in the Q2 report.

Nintendo isn't done with its film ambitions and wants to have the same kind of sales boost effect apply to the Zelda franchise. A bit ago, Nintendo announced it was making a live-action The Legend of Zelda film that's being co-financed and distributed by Sony Pictures.