Nintendo and DeNA's upcoming Super Mario Runis predicted to achieve 1.5 billion downloads across its lifecycle.

The estimate comes from Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based games industry consultancy Kantan Games, who says that his prediction is for all downloads across the game's lifecycle on both iOS and Android.

His reasons are that Mario is one of the biggest brands ever, that Apple is already pushing the game hard with an App Store page and pre-registration, and that it will be the first time that people in China will be able to play a Mario game.

All or nothing

He also suggested that Nintendo would be doing everything in its power to make sure the game matches up in quality to the recent runaway success Pokemon GO.

Super Mario Run will offer a free-to-start element of the game, before asking users to pay for the full vesion. Toto warned that the free part of the game must offer a "reasonable amount of content", or else the game will flop due to reduced virality and word of mouth.

He noted that on this part, Nintendo has already caused some confusion over exactly how the game will be priced.

The 1.5 billion download figure may be high, but other runners have accrued high numbers of downloads. Subway Surfers and Temple Run 1 and 2 have amassed more than one billion downloads, for example.

You can read the full blog post on Toto's website.