AppleInsider Staff
"Mario Kart Tour" clocked an estimated 90 million downloads in the week following its debut, according to a report released Wednesday, making the racing game Nintendo's fastest moving mobile launch ever.
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.
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10 Comments
Appears that no-one took any notice of AI's review 😂
yup of course it has
drifting on the coat tails of one of the world’s best known video game brands. all we can hope is that round the next corner is a giant pile of its own hubris to crash into.
i say hope, out of total respect for Nintendo.
Unfortunately for all of us at least once in our lives we need a wake up call to when we have decided to be dicks.
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not sure if other AI readers feel this way, but i cannot understand how gambling is now globally accepted for children, little children and how advertising gambling games in other games (often after each turn) to little children is cool.
none of the perpetrators are even having to defend themselves (this is way beyond loot boxes). Apple does not even give a shit and they would ban a game where you slap world leaders - but slot machines for 5yr olds does not raise an eyebrow.
i have never even read an article about the pandemic, not on any tech site. how is every one cool with this.
(edit - emoji fail)