Mario Kart Tour's September Update Will Render Some Android Phones Incompatible

Well, that happens. I faced the same issue back in 2016 to run Pokémon Go on an old phone.

Can you use a controller on it yet ?

Hey look, another reason not to play mobile garbage!

Imagine having to upgrade from a Switch to a Switch OLED or you wouldn't be able to play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe anymore. That's what this is and it's utter trash.

Can't say I'm surprised Mario Kart Tour is leaving older phones behind. Game already barely ran on my LG Stylo 4 and Pocket Camp already left it behind, so I knew this day was coming eventually.

Oh well, if I ever give a toss about playing the game again I should have a new phone coming before September.

@Yosher that’s terrible and we had to pay £50 pounds to play Mario kart tour. Bad nintendo bad. So trashy

@Yosher The Switch and Switch OLED have the same CPU and RAM. You can't expect a free game to support 1,000s of different manufacturer SKUs of Android phones. The risk of buying a low-end phone means you'll be left in the dust with app support.

@Yosher Did you know that most likely, this "cruel" movement is because this next update, they add things that an old smartphone can no longer do, very possibly they will add MK8 tracks in the future, that is, anti-gravity and other surprises, no For nothing they are asking for systems with more powerful processors, something that with the old ones they could not and unfortunately they will have to leave out for this new one.
Not necessarily these improvements are bad and cruel as almost everything related to smartphones wants to award.

@Yosher imagine we had to upgrade our Wii u copy of Mario kart 8 to the switch’s mario kart 8 deluxe to play the new battle mode courses and get dual item boxes. We had to spend money. That’s utta trash that is

@MetalToad You might not have, but people might have spent money on its garbage gacha system or have a gold pass. Which could very well go up and beyond that 50 bucks. Nintendo is definitely trying to do this to its players anyway.

@madmatt213 I know both Switches are the same power-wise, but they could very well have done this. But okay, for you, let's say the Switch OLED was an actual Switch Pro then with extra power and otherwise have the same situation.

@SakuraHaruka They could keep an older version of the game playable on older phones rather than rendering it entirely unplayable on those systems. Either way they are forcing people to purchase expensive new hardware to play their 'free' little mobile game if they have an upcoming incompatible system.

@1UP_MARIO The Switch version releasing with new content did not render the Wii U version unplayable. In fact, it's still perfectly playable, including (free) online mode, to this day. Saying that as someone who did buy both a Wii U, Switch, and both versions of Mario Kart 8.

@CactusMan Okay maybe I was a little too harsh on the actual practice, but it IS another reason (for me, at least) to just... not bother with mobile games because you never know when you're forced to upgrade. Of course, if you're one of those people who upgrades on a regular basis with newer phones to begin with then you're probably fine, but that's definitely not for everyone, and I think it just sucks when you hear a game you've enjoyed playing suddenly can't be played anymore because they feel the need to add updates that don't support older phones.

@Yosher I bought both too. Mario kart 8 over 500 hours, Mario kart 8 deluxe 25 hours played.
Again seriously. If Mario kart tour bothers you so much just don’t play it or give it much attention. Keep enjoying Mario kart 8

I get what @Yosher is saying because this is part of the bigger problem which is the artificial limitation of a phone's life.

We should focus on sustainability but when phone manufacturers keep releasing new models almost every year, only a couple of years old phones become obsolete as apps stop working on them.

They did that in Mario Run too, my phone suddenly was not compatible anymore and it won't launch despite buying it...

@madmatt213 The Switch and Switch OLED have the same CPU and RAM. You can't expect a free game to support 1,000s of different manufacturer SKUs of Android phones. The risk of buying a low-end phone means you'll be left in the dust with app support.

Talk about missing the point. Let's try it another way.

Your purchased copy of Super Mario 3D Land no longer works unless you buy the New 3DS even though it used to run just fine on the original 3DS.

Another example? Your PS4 games no longer work unless you buy a PS4 Pro even though they used to work fine on the base PS4.

One more example: Since Square Enix is putting out FF1-6 (in the more pixelated, original forms) on mobile, they are discontinuing the remasters of some of the games. If you bought those games they will eventually stop working due to a lack of updates. Those games were full price.

No worries, my phone was released in 2018. And you certainly won't catch me deeming that "old" when I only finished paying for it in late 2020.😆

Granted, it's been a while since I had MKT installed anyway. I don't have an issue with its monetizations (because unlike some Freudian complainers and token society "contributors" in the fandom, I'm usually at least marginally saner than to invest in them), and the game controls are even unbelievably tolerable for a touch screen racer, but the content admittedly underwhelmed me in the long run. I dared to expect a variety of cameos on par and maybe even beyond MK8, with blackjack and inklings, but metallic recolours of the familiar Mushroom Kingdom denizens are less enticing to grind those cups and passes for.

@CactusMan I think you are missing the point. All the examples that you named did never manifest.

Oh wow, I thought I explained it pretty well but you still missed the point. Carry on.

@Yosher
Unfortunately that is not how things work..., also, do you have a Smartphone or PC that is more than 5 years old? We are few who still maintain equipment that is currently somewhat obsolete and in operation, and also, there are already games that have suffered this as Asphalt 8, a game of almost 10 years, obviously that game saw several smartphones go by until today and it no longer works on many of them.

@Nego
PC games say hello to that situation, and it's been like that for years.

mobile gaming is a trash cashcow anyways, i would rather play mario kart 8 deluxe on my switch and use that when i'm out and about or my 3ds and play mario kart on that

you are not missing anything loosing compatibility by playing on a phone 🙄🙄🙄

@Yosher Mario Kart Tour is a "live" free-to-play game. They can't hold back their game continuing to develop it for aging, old hardware. Most people, especially people in the Android ecosystem, are upgrading to a new phone every year or two. The devs of this game most likely looked at the tiny sliver of of the pie of people playing the game on the old hardware and decided to cut them out, so that the vast majority of the people playing the game will continue to play it. The developers or Nintendo aren't trying to sell any new phones by doing this, they're just trying to make a better experience for the majority of the players that are playing on modern hardware.

@Yosher It's not exclusive to mobile games, it happens to any game that has constant updates, it also happens with PC games as well, a computer that ran Team Fortress 2 in 2007, won't run the current game now, but the current game is way better than it was in 2007.

And on consoles, since they are a fixed hardware, sometimes the older consoles stop having updates, GTA V for PS3 and 360 are no longer having the content of the PS4 and XONE versions.

@Yosher Also, Mario Kart Tour is way better than other trash mobile games, much of the terrible gacha elements of other games are not there, the game doesn't even have ads.

Plus, Mario Kart Tour is pretty much a different game, Mario Kart 8 is way better, but Tour is a different experience that you won't find in any other Mario Kart game, it is a score attack game, think Mario Kart + Tony Hawk + RPG.

And yes, the problem of having to buy new phones all the time goes way beyond just games.

Now, Mario Kart Tour won't run on your old phone, in a few years, or just months, your whole phone will have to go because they aren't designed to last, all batteries eventually die out, and it's often a better option that instead of replacing the battery, you replace your whole phone.

I agree with Yosher. The issue is that people have put money into a game they will no longer be able to play. It would be in Nintendo's interest to support 2 versions of the game.

The benefit of console gaming is that the game will never be incompatible with the hardware, save for updates that cause problems, because the base hardware never changes. And usually, when there's a bad update, it gets patched.

Smartphone gaming is an oxymoron sometimes.

Those are some random requirements. The Moto G6 I think is Android 10, and only about 2 years ols. Moto makes some nice phones.

Though really, nearly every decent Android game has some random requirements that make no sense and it's trial and error to see which phones work - we have 4 in our house - so I suppose I'm not surprised.

Glad I wasn't playing it. My son was playing it fairly regularly on his 3 year old phone, I doubt it will work now. We were trying to buy him a new phone but he keeps saying no, can't be bothered. This may actually get him to change his mind.

WHY Nintendo WHY?
Why are you doing this you know that about 90% of mobile phones are not using a 64 bit CPU. and those that do are mostly used by business people who don't play games. Please don't change to the 64bit CPU please. You will lose all of your mobile players. I beg you to reconsider your changes to all of your mobile phone games.

You guys should be aware that Google is doing support for Jellybean on Google play services. While 5.0 is Ice Cream Sandwich. There are various things that happen to make old phones incompatible. You gotta remember how old and low these specs are. Android 12 is right around the corner coming out this year.

@Yosher That is a gross over-simplification of why developers on mobile may drop support for under-performing hardware.
Those phone models described in terms of performance are multiple generations behind the norm. I looked up the specs of half those phones and their respective benchmark scores and they don't even beat my HTC One M7 that I still kept from 2013. This isn't like Nintendo telling you to upgrade from a Switch to a Switch OLED, it's like them telling you to upgrade you N64 to a Switch.
Hardware like those phones not only give users a bad experience in their game, in which they'll retaliate with negative reviews but also drags down other people's experience with the multiplayer aspect of the game, their long load times means longer waiting for other players in multiplayer as matches struggle syncing everyone up.

Am I the only one that is a little annoyed that they're updating Mario Kart mobile, but not the switch deluxe one? I'd love new tracks in that one.

Can a tablet with quad core CPU play this game