Eric Ravenscraft
The words “earnings call” is about as entertaining as a Virtual Boy, but Nintendo managed to make their boring business call interesting by dropping some major announcements. Chief among them: Mario Kart is getting a smartphone release.
Nintendo has been dipping its toes in the mobile gaming waters with smaller games like Super Mario Run and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Mario Kart Tour marks the next big release. While we don’t know anything about the game aside from its title, but this is the first new release in the Mario Kart series since Mario Kart 8 was released in 2014 (excluding the re-release of the Deluxe version of that game for the Switch last year). According to Nintendo, Mario Kart Tour will drop in the “fiscal year ending in March 2019.”
The company also finally gave some new details about its online service for the Switch, cleverly called Switch Online. The service is scheduled to launch in September of 2018 (though it’s worth pointing out this service has been delayed before) and will cost $20 per year. You can also order it for $4 per month (which would end up being $48/year) or $8 for three months (or $32/year).
For your money, you’ll be able to play games online with other players—a feature which is currently free until Switch Online launches—voice chat with friends, and gain access to older classic games. This seems to be how Nintendo is going to approach the Virtual Console-style backwards compatibility featured on the Wii U, allowing you to subscribe to a catalog of old games instead of buying each one outright. However, Nintendo still hasn’t provided all the details, so we’ll have to wait and see when the service launches in September.
Source: Ars Technica
