Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Nintendo launched Mario Kart Tour on iOS and Android devices, providing the company with a major success.
The company had long insisted that Mario only be featured on console games, and this was only the second time for the character to appear in mobile games, following Super Mario Run, which was released for iOS in December 2016 and for Android in March 2017.
Mario Kart Tour mobile game faced mixed news upon its launch. On the one hand, demand for the game was very high, but SO high that it overloaded the server for a while.
Nevertheless, according to Sensor Tower, Mario Kart Tour became the top free iPhone app in 58 markets, including Japan. It was downloaded about 20 million times in its first day. By the end of the first week, that figure had reached 90 million, almost 60% of them on Android devices.
Mario Kart Tour had by far the strongest launch of any mobile game by Nintendo.