Without fanfare, almost at dawn Brasília time, Nintendo announced its next mobile game: Mario Kart Tour. The announcement came along with the company’s financial results presentation, on January 31, 2018 in Japan, and reached here already at the turn into February 1.
Almost no information accompanied the news. The only thing confirmed was the release window: by the end of the fiscal year ending in March 2019. No game images, no control scheme or business model, just the checkered flag and the promise.
The chequered flag has been raised and the finish line is near. A new mobile application is now in development: Mario Kart Tour! Releasing in the fiscal year ending in March 2019. #MarioKartTour pic.twitter.com/f81AG3BMaI
— Nintendo UK (@NintendoUK) February 1, 2018
The context helps explain the bet. Nintendo already had Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp on phones, and Mario Kart was the company’s most popular racing series. Bringing the kart to the touch screen was a natural step, but full of questions about how to adapt the controls.
What came next
The deadline was missed: Mario Kart Tour was delayed and only reached iOS and Android on September 25, 2019. The debut was strong, with 90.1 million downloads in the first week, the highest number for a Nintendo mobile game. The game originally used a vertical screen, themed seasons every two weeks and a subscription, the Gold Pass, which unlocked features such as the 200cc mode.
The monetization was the most criticized point, especially the character draw system, which Nintendo announced it would remove in September 2022 and replaced with a regular shop in October. Official multiplayer only arrived on March 8, 2020. Nintendo stopped releasing new content on October 4, 2023, and the game was shut down on September 30, 2026, with no offline version. It was almost seven years of racing on the phone, and the road to the finish line was longer than the announcement suggested.
Source: Nintendo UK.
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