Nintendo's Mario Kart Tour might have only launched in September, but it's experienced one of the biggest mobile video game releases of 2019. In its first 24 hours of availability, it was downloaded 20 million times and banked $1 million. By the end of the first month, the downloads skyrocketed to 123 million and the game had banked around $37.4 million.
Based on this recent success, it shouldn't be a surprise to hear it was recognised at Apple's recent awards event in New York City, as the most downloaded free game on the Apple Store this year. It also makes it Apple's most downloaded video game of 2019. As you can see in the chart below, it outperformed titles like Call of Duty: Mobile and even Epic's battle royale, Fortnite.
Mario Kart Tour was the only Nintendo game featured across the top paid and free game download charts. For a title released so late in September, though, this is a rather impressive feat.
What do you think about Mario Kart Tour topping Apple's most downloaded game charts? Have you downloaded it yourself yet? Comment below.
[source nintendoenthusiast.com, via kotaku.com.au]
Comments (22)
Ugh, that's terrible news...
Contrary to what most people who haven’t played it think.... it’s a great free game.
And it’s great to see a Nintendo title winning over Call of Duty and ugh... Fortnite
Imagine what it could achieve if it were actually any good!
Damn... some salty suckers here. Just be glad it beat Fartnite.
Great game. Disappointed I was 5th last night and today I was 7th in the rank cup. No rubies for me this week. My score was over 38000 and still 7th.
@1UP_MARIO how are you getting to 38,000??!
@fafonio
The last cup was
cheep cheep lagoon13000
Choco Island 12000
Dk pass 15000
I was 7th
1st was 47000. It’s hard to compete with that but I had fun playing.
Haven’t even tried it yet not sure I care.
But it's a horrible game with micro transactions.
Once again people on here showing how out of touch they are with the mass market.
@johnvboy No, it's the children who are wrong.
In all seriousness, I think most people on here realise that the mass market could not give any expletives regarding microtransactions and the like, but it doesn't mean we can't voice our extreme dislike of them and our concerns that these will become more common place.
Millions of people getting their first taste of Nintendo this way. So sad.
@chardir,
It's not sad fella, it raises the brand awareness, people on here will not be happy until Nintendo jump back into the power race, fail at it and go bust, oh and release all the old games that never sold well in the first place, because it's what a few internet minority core fans want.
@johnvboy Nah, I don't think any of that stuff. Their core Switch offering is brilliant. And "there's no such thing as bad publicity" I suppose, but Tour is hardly flying the flag for the quality of Mario Kart et al.
@chardir,
The comment was not aimed at you personally, I just tagged onto your comment.
Nintendo do have to increase their revenue sources, they are not like Sony and Microsoft who have lots of other profit avenues, if they fail at video games that's it, I want them to stick around as I love their franchises.
The problem is, as with all mobile games, the userbase drops off after a week or two. First two tours I had tons of people on my friends list added from all over social media from different points of the spectrum of "gamer". After that the people who don't own a games console soon dropped off and by now it's only really a select number of about 5 or 6 people who play video games regularly that are still playing it. I suspect we'll see a bump up when multiplayer drops but I don't expect the interest to be long term.
Even I'm getting a bit bored of the constant same tracks being reused and finding it impossible to hit the score requirements without the top unlocks, which you can only earn quickly by dropping cash.
@fafonio if you’ve been playing every week, you’ve gotten a lot of tickets to max out multiple racers/karts/gliders (and raise their levels). Other than that, a strat I found that helps is drop to about 5th place for the better item spawns and then focus on raising your combo. You should get some good frenzies. Then try to get as close to first as possible before you finish lap 1 (for more points) then drop back again. Repeat and get back into 1st for the end. It takes a number of tries since RNG can mess it up, but if you’re lucky and can get a combo lasting the entire stage, you score very high.
@ShadJV thanks... Ive tried that but haven’t been able to reach 40,000 points. However this was my first ranked cup I haven’t finished in first place.
I was just wondering if people had already hacked the game
@fafonio nah, it’s doable, I’ve been just short of 40k for the weekly cups, if I played every day I’m sure my level points would push me over. A lot of it is maximizing your starting points and 1st place points. The rest is entirely about getting one continuous string of points, which takes a little skill and a lot of CPU luck. I wish there was more tiers though, at this point I’ve caught up with the whales in tiers and it’s nearly impossible to beat their maxed out scores...
@fafonio yea this is my first ranked cup I was outside of the top 3 with no rubies acquired. 38000 score and 6th. Good luck on the next one
@Hagemaru I wouldn’t say the frenzy chance itself changes, but the odds of getting a better frenzy exist (as in, offensive items you can pelt opponents with to raise the combo). In the lead, really only coin frenzies are useful (and to a small extent, banana frenzies), but further back you can get better stuff to get more bang for your buck. It’s a risk/reward though because you wanna get back to first both times you cross the tape.
Nintendo went all-in with Mario Kart Tour. I thought mobile gaming was all just low-tech, simplified garbage compared to consoles. And for me it was. Even Nintendo's mobile versions of beloved franchises were several steps down from their original source. Until Mario Kart Tour. This one is even better than some of the mainline games.
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