Nintendo Bringing Mario Kart Tour To Mobile By March 2019

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Nintendo – on Wednesday – announced that Mario Kart would soon debut on the mobile platform in the form of Mario Kart Tour. The app would be launched in the next financial year, i.e., between April 2018 and March 2019.

Nintendo’s mobile revenue on the rise

Nintendo refrained from revealing any further details on the Mario Kart Tour, but the franchise has been one of the biggest achievements for the company. Yesterday, the company announced that it sold 14.86 million Switch consoles so far along with about half as many units of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

The Mario Kart Tour will be Nintendo’s fifth game for the mobile platforms (both for the iOS and Android smartphones), notes CNET. Nintendo’s first mobile game was Miitomo, a social-networking game for both of the popular operating systems. The title, however, will be discontinued in May. Other mobile titles from the Japanese company are Mario, Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing.

While announcing its nine-month earnings report on Wednesday, the company applauded the mobile revenue stating that it was up to 29.1 billion yen ($625 million) on the back of these gaming titles.

Mario movie coming

Nintendo is riding high on the success of the Switch and its gaming titles, but it does not seem to be enough for the company. Now it is working with the Despicable Me and Minions famed studio – Illumination Studios – to make an animated Super Mario film. None other than Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the Mario series, will be producing the movie along with Chris Meledandri, Illumination founder and CEO. Meledandri is also the executive producer of the original Ice Age and Horton Hears a Who.

In a press release, the company said that it is pursuing goals “of effectively leveraging its intellectual properties in mediums outside of video games.” This suggests there could be more movies and/or TV shows if the debut movie becomes a hit.

The hint of an upcoming film was dropped a long ways back by the Nintendo CEO. In 2016, Tatsumi Kimishima said that they were in conversation with “multiple partners” about bringing on a movie. Kimishima stated that the live-action film, which was released in 1993, did not do well and this is why the company would like to make movies on their own rather than just licensing something.

Switch online service in September

The Japanese game maker also announced that its online subscription service for the Switch would arrive somewhere in September. Initial speculations suggest that the service would be similar to the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live allowing multiplayers for a fee. To use the service, players would need to cough up $3.99 per month or $19.99 per year.

Subscribers to the service would also get to play the classic games from the library, which would get new features such as leaderboards and multiplayer. More about the new service will be revealed in the following months.

Apart from the aforementioned developments, the company is also planning to release more titles. In 2017, the Japanese firm came up with Fore Emblem Heroes, Super Mario Run, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and the ill-fated Miitomo social app. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Nintendo is working on a Legend of Zelda mobile title.

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