Nintendo’s sixth mobile game, Mario Kart Tour, is thought to be its most successful mobile debut, according to analytics company, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence.
With an estimated 20 million copies of Mario Kart Tour installed across both Apple and Android devices within its opening 24 hours, the analysts project Nintendo has already generated $1m globally.
Mario Kart Tour has almost tripled the launch figures of Nintendo’s prior top launch, Super Mario Run, which secured seven million users in its opening 24 hours on iOS devices alone.
“Looking at the publisher’s most recent release, July’s Dr. Mario World, Mario Kart Tour has seen nearly 31 times more installs than that title thus far,” the report said. “It is currently the most downloaded iPhone app overall in most of the markets where it is available, while Dr. Mario World only reached that position in three regions at launch.”
Interestingly, Mario Kart Tour is only the third-best mobile launch for the company in terms of day one player spending, though, reaching just 25 per cent of the $4.3m generated by Fire Emblem Heroes on its launch day. Super Mario Run also beat the latest release with roughly four times the launch in-app spending than Mario Kart Tour.
“It’s possible that Mario Kart Tour will have a slower start in terms of spending than Nintendo’s other mobile titles as the publisher and co-developer DeNA are experimenting with season pass monetisation which includes a free two-week trial period before subscribers are actually charged,” Sensor Tower explained. “The $4.99 per month Gold Pass is current[ly] the game’s most popular in-app purchase, but none of the users who have purchased it will be charged for another 13 days; Some of those will likely cancel before that point.”
In other Nintendo news, despite selling over 160,000 Nintendo Switch Lite units in its debut week in Japan, Nintendo’s share price was sent tumbling, falling 4.37 per cent – it’s lowest point in eight months – as sales failed to hit Citibank’s 300,000 projection. Its thought the stock drop is partly attributed to Media Create, which originally reported the Lite’s first week of sales as 114,000, not 160,000.
Nintendo announced the Nintendo Switch Lite, a new iteration of its handheld console, in July. The new system – available in yellow, grey, and turquoise – went on sale September 20, 2019. In line with recent rumours that Nintendo had two new Switch models in production, the Nintendo Switch Lite is smaller than the original version and does will not include a stand nor a dock, so unlike the current model it will not support video output to TV, but it will support “all games in the robust Nintendo Switch library that support handheld mode, although some games will have restrictions”.
