Mario Kart Tour, which released just over a week ago, has become Nintendo’s most successful mobile game launch in its history.
According to Sensor Tower, the game was downloaded 90 million times within its first week, which is six times more than Ninty’s previous most successful mobile launch, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. That game picked up 14.3 million downloads in its first week, meaning Mario Kart Tour got a mere 75.7 million more downloads. Wowzer. Nintendo’s third most successful launch, Super Mario Run, achieved just under 13 million downloads during its launch week.
Despite its ridiculous number of downloads, Mario Kart Tour only generated $12.7 million in player spending. That puts it behind both Super Mario Run, which generated $16.1 million, and Fire Emblem Heroes, which generated $28.2 million. Most of Mario Kart Tour’s revenue has been spent by App Store players, who have spent a total of $9.6 million between them, while Google Play users have spent $3.1 million between them. That’s a strange stat when you consider that the game was downloaded 53.5 million times on Android devices compared to the 36.5 million downloads on iOS devices.
Of the games 90 million downloads, 13.2 million came from the United States, 10.7 million from Brazil, and 5.8 million from Mexico, making those the three most popular countries for the game. It’s unsurprising then that 45.4% of the revenue came from the US.
Although free to download, Mario Kart Tour contains a whole bunch of microtransactions for players to spend money on, and there’s also a rather strange monthly subscription which costs £4.99 per month, giving you access to gold cosmetic items and 200cc karts. With no break down of how the revenue is being generated it’s hard to know how many people are paying that monthly fee, but I can’t imagine it’s a lot considering the little that is currently offered for the money.
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