Mario Kart Tour notches estimated 90M downloads in first week of availability

As noted by app analytics firm Sensor Tower, "Mario Kart Tour's" launch week numbers put it leagues ahead of past Nintendo debuts. The title's 90 million downloads are split between Android and iOS, which brought in 53.5 million and 36.5 million downloads, respectively.

By comparison, Nintendo's previous top performer "Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp" managed 14.3 million downloads in its first week, while "Super Mario Run" hit just under 13 million downloads over the same period, according to Sensor Tower. The latter figure is up for interpretation, however, as Nintendo said "Super Mario Run" was downloaded 40 million times in four days as an iOS exclusive.

U.S. customers exhibited high levels of interest in the driving game with 13.2 million downloads, followed by 10.7 million for Brazil and 5.8 million for Mexico, Sensor Tower estimates.

Despite a healthy lead in overall downloads, "Mario Kart Tour" is Nintendo's third-largest game in terms of launch week revenue with an estimated $12.7 million spent on unlocking "freemium" content. By contrast, players of the free-to-play "Fire Emblem Heroes" and free-to-try "Super Mario Run" doled out a respective $28.2 million and $16.1 million over the same one-week period.

Typical of most cross-platform apps, iOS accounted for a majority of first week revenue with $9.6 million, or 75.5%, while Android raked in $3.1 million, or 24.5%, Sensor Tower said. The U.S. led spending with $5.8 million, followed by Japan's $4 million and France's $752,000.

"Mario Kart Tour" was announced in January 2018 and launched last week after multiple delays. AppleInsider found the game to be less than impressive, with poor driving mechanics, questionable AI implementation and an overabundance of microtransactions putting a stain on the distinguished franchise.