Nintendo will stop adding new content to the mobile game Mario Kart Tour starting October 4th.
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Nintendo and game publisher DeNA will discontinue creating new content for the mobile game Mario Kart Tour starting October 4th, Video Games Chronicle reports. The move indicates Nintendo may be pivoting its focus away from mobile games.
The companies will release new Mario Kart Tour content as a part of its Anniversary Tour starting September 20th. Following the Battle Tour’s launch on October 4th, however, the company will only release old content.
“No new courses, drivers, karts, or gliders will be added following the Battle Tour starting 04/10/2023,” Nintendo wrote in a message to players, though the company did not explain why. “We hope you continue to enjoy playing Mario Kart Tour.”
Mario Kart Tour recently became Nintendo’s second biggest earner on mobile after Fire Emblem Heroes. It earned around $243 million after being downloaded 230 million times, while the free-to-play version was the most downloaded iPhone game when it was released in 2019.
Yet mobile games have made up a relatively small percentage of Nintendo’s earnings compared to rival publishers like Activision and Take-Two. That might explain why Nintendo has ended support for five of eight major mobile games since the company started producing content for mobile in 2016 — Mario Kart Tour included.
And while Mario Kart Tour has achieved some success, it, too, has taken a hit. The game’s estimated monthly earnings dropped by $1 million last October after Nintendo and DeNA got rid of the game’s controversial gacha system.
Nintendo’s relative lack of success hasn’t discouraged other rivals, however, from entering the mobile gaming business. Sony is planning for around half of its games to be on mobile and PC by 2025, with 20 percent of new PlayStation games on smartphones. The company even launched the PlayStation Studios Mobile Division last year in pursuit of that goal.
“By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said… also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere,” said Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan last year, reports Video Games Chronicle.