Mario Kart Tour is already running victory laps around Pokémon Go and Super Mario Run‘s day-one download numbers.
While Pokémon Go continues to bring in massive profits for Nintendo and co-developer Niantic, Mario Kart Tour is giving the Pocket Monsters a race for their money.
Sensor Tower, a reputable tech site dedicated to reporting on all things mobile apps revenue, reports that Mario Kart Tour hit 20 million downloads within the first day of the game’s release. As Super Mario Run had 7 million day-one downloads, and Pokémon Go hit just below that at 6.7 million, the power of the Mario Kart app’s release proves that the racer series can still pack quite the punch.
New release from Sensor Tower confirms:
– 20m dl in first 24 hours, 3x Super Mario Run.
– $1m revenue in first 24 hours, 25% of Fire Emblem Heroes.
– Gold Pass users on 2 week free trial so spend not tracked yet. https://t.co/y8Nl15kGrM pic.twitter.com/HRKk0zahz7— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) September 26, 2019
Though Mario Kart Tour is still infantile in age, it earned $1 million within its first day of release. For a point of reference, that’s nearly 17 times what the average American makes in a year.
The kart racer finds players swiping and tapping to steer and throw items, bringing the Mario racing series into the world of apps and microtransactions for the very first time. With a Gold Pass subscription service that unlocks a faster racing CC, the game’s $4.99 monthly premium rate will likely continue to be Nintendo and Niantic’s main source of app revenue.
Related: Niantic’s Harry Potter – Wizards Unite is a bad Pokémon Go clone
The app is relatively easy to play with only one hand, but glaringly lacks the seemingly obvious multiplayer function present in every other iteration of Mario Kart. Much like the Pokémon Go Generation releases, it is predicted that Tour will slowly release new batches of features and characters throughout the game’s anticipated growth.