How many times has Super Mario Run been downloaded? Nobody really knows

It’s a little after 24 hours from when Super Mario Run has hit the App Store and nearly every website has a report about how much Super Mario Run has been downloaded. Each website has been fed a press release or report from a different ‘analyst’ firm and just about all of them have come up with a different number.

We’re not even going to touch the fact that even if you download Super Mario Run you’re not necessarily buying it, meaning the amount of people who have downloaded it is a useless metric. What’s the conversion rate to sales? Oh you bet they’ve got made up figures for that too.

Let’s have a look.

According to The Verge’s story they’re reporting that thanks to analytics firm Apptopia that there were 2.85 million downloads of the game in the first day of availability.

That sounds pretty good, it’s bigger than anything else on the App Store and smashes Pokemon Go’s record as well. But hold on, just next door at Polygon they’ve got something else.

According to their source, App Annie, its been downloaded 3.5 million times in the first day. Not even in 24 hours though; they’re saying that those 3.5 million came through in 14 hours. This App Annie source also says that Pokémon Go did 4.7 million downloads in 24 hours, again another different figure to Apptopia.

Who to believe?

Tech Crunch are a little weird because in their title they state 5 million downloads but then in the first paragraph they use Apptopia’s figures of 2.85 million. It’s not until you get to the next paragraph that they mention the 5 million from Sensor Tower, yet another analyst firm who has thrown numbers at a dart board to decide how much the game has downloaded.

So why point out these three sites? This morning when I saw my Twitter feed filled with charts and announcements about how well Super Mario Run was going I went to write a story about it – until I couldn’t. How can anyone objectively report on this and say this is right when the numbers between these analysts are so widely different?

So what about the actual metric that matters? How much has it sold? How many people actually bought the full game?

Well, Sensor Tower says the game earned over $5 million dollars in the first 24 hours. Yet another firm, Mobile Action, says $8.3 million in the US alone, but good old App Annie says $4 million worldwide.

We’ll probably never know how well Super Mario Run really did until Nintendo tell us, but there is one official way right now to see how it’s doing and that’s to look at the App Store charts. Super Mario Run is topping or close to topping downloaded and grossing charts in many regions. It’s even above Pokémon Go in a lot of places, so if that’s making bank at the top of the charts then we’re pretty sure Super Mario Run is too.

But if the only metric for Pokémon Go’s success is from these analysts too…