Commentary: A Nintendo Cinematic Universe? What the Super Mario maker can learn From Marvel

ELEVATING LESSER-KNOWN CHARACTERS

For Nintendo, movies and videos themselves aren’t the point. Despite its global success, the first Mario film didn’t make a huge contribution to its bottom line.

The segment capturing that revenue saw sales nearly double from a year earlier to 92.7 billion yen (US$582 million), but that’s just over 5 per cent of the company’s total. Far more important is how multimedia helps boost the visibility and popularity of the characters beyond gamers, and brings new users to its consoles. 

The firm credits the movie with boosting sales of older Mario titles that year by 30 per cent. And when Super Mario Bros Wonder launched a few months later, it became the fastest-selling title in the franchise and has more than 17 million units sold to date. Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal is among those who expect Nintendo to pull the same trick again and announce a new marquee Mario game in summer for release later this year.

The question for Nintendo is whether it can elevate second-tier properties like Star Fox, which has been dormant for a decade. No one was better at doing this than Marvel, which turned lesser-known characters like Iron Man into beloved household names.

But it seems to have lost the touch in recent years, with a series of flops centred on recast heroes. Disney has been forced to sheepishly go back to the well with this year’s Avengers: Doomsday, reintroducing Captain America star Chris Evans and casting Robert Downey Jr as the villain.