Nintendo launches Mario Kart Tour to muscle into mobile gaming market

Nintendo is set to bring one of its most successful franchises to mobile for the first time on Wednesday with the global launch of Mario Kart Tour, in a test of the gaming firm’s strategy to drive growth beyond consoles.

Mario Kart Tour will feature gameplay familiar to longtime Nintendo fans but with controls optimized for mobile devices. Players steer characters such as Mario, Wario and Toad as they race karts through Tokyo and other cities while laying traps for opponents.

Bringing the Mario Kart franchise to smartphones offers the Japanese firm a chance to reverse a run of lackluster releases including this year’s Dr. Mario World, a reboot of a minor title which gamers criticized as unpolished. Since its 1992 launch, the Mario Kart series has sold tens of millions of units.

But Mario Kart Tour faces potential roadblocks of its own. It will initially lack a multiplayer option – which analysts expect to come later – and is likely to use an in-game payment system popular in Japan but which has been compared to gambling.

“This is probably Nintendo’s most critical mobile release in a long time, if not ever,” said Serkan Toto, founder of game industry consultancy Kantan Games.

Expectations among investors and gamers alike have been heightened for Mario Kart Tour because of the franchise’s console success and due to the title’s long development time, with the release date pushed back from early this year, Toto said.

A test version of the game featured in-game payment mechanics including “gacha” where players pay to receive random rewards – such as rare drivers and karts.

A mainstay of Japan’s highest-grossing mobile titles, gacha has been criticized for encouraging impulsive spending.

“It’s going to be a challenge to apply Japanese-style gacha mechanics in the West,” said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, who sees Mario Kart Tour struggling to hold players’ interest long enough to sustain in-game spending.

It also remains to be seen whether Nintendo will be able to square the use of gacha with its famous family-friendly image. The Japanese firm is known for cartoon-like games that eschew the realistic violence and gore found in Western rival titles.