'Super Mario Run' Data Usage: Game Consumes Over 60 Megabytes Per Hour, Report Says

Players have rushed to start playing Super Mario Run, the latest mobile game from Nintendo. But it hasn’t taken long for them to notice the game is a considerable data hog. A report from Apple Insider shows the game consumes an upwards of 60 megabytes per hour.

The report was conducted through a series of tests of Super Mario Run on the night of the game’s launch. The account from Apple Insider took into consideration the demand for downloads and found most users reporting their data on social media to fall within the 40 to 60 megabytes per hour range.

Server issues caused by the game’s immediate popularity led to some players reporting nearly 150 megabytes of data required by the time they completed the in-game tutorial, though the figures are likely outliers from what is consumed by standard play.

By comparison, the wildly popular Pokémon Go mobile game released earlier this year consumed closer to 30 megabytes of data per hour at its peak usage—though other reports indicate it uses as little as three megabytes per hour.

According to a source from Apple quoted by Apple Insider, much of the data-sucking comes from the game’s servers. The source described the game as “chatty” and said it does a fair amount of back-and-forth communication behind the scenes.

Because of the demand on the server, some of that interaction fails and sent and received data packets simply time out. However when that happens it still counts as data usage, leaving players left fitting the bill as they eat into their data caps.

The source at Apple recommended playing the game primarily on Wi-Fi, especially when initially downloading the levels. Users on unlimited data plans obviously will have no bones about playing while on the go—save for perhaps with the battery drain the game causes.