Nintendo’s premium mobile racing game has already made the company an incredible amount of money, even as it has shifted its monetization strategy.
As Sensor Tower explains on their own website, they recognize Net Revenue as an app’s or game’s total revenue. As opposed to Gross Revenue, which is the sum total of money an app or game brings in, Net Revenue removes any costs incurred after gross revenue. In this case, they calculate the 30% fee Apple and Alphabet take from their app developers and remove it from the equation. They also do not include any money made from selling real-life items, which doesn’t apply to Mario Kart Tour, but should give you a clearer idea of the metrics they provide.
As we had previously reported, Mario Kart Tour is unusually heavily monetized, even among mobile games. On top of the requisite in-app purchases any mobile game provides, Mario Kart Tour has a premium subscription that allowed you to access exclusive content, primarily high-level races, as well as an allowance of in-game currency.
In their recent announcement, Nintendo revealed that not only would they be removing the gacha element of the game, but also the gating of the high-level races to the premium subscription. That’s a lot of money they are throwing off the table, but industry observers note that this is in line with changes in Nintendo’s mobile strategy.
A cursory survey of Sensor Tower’s data would reveal that Mario Kart Tour isn’t even anywhere close to the top highest-grossing mobile games of all time. The only game that’s made the list is Pokemon Go, but that game was developed as a project by The Pokemon Company, as opposed to Nintendo’s own initiatives in mobile, including Fire Emblem Heroes and Dr Mario World. Another such project, Dragalia Lost, is already scheduled to be closed this November.
While Nintendo has not revealed plans to shut down Mario Kart Tour, they already revealed their intention to shift away from mobile games as a company in investor meetings. As far back as 2021, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa expressed an interest in bringing Nintendo IP to movies and shows, as Illumination Studios’ Super Mario Bros movie was in development. Last July, they acquired a movie studio called Dynamo Pictures, with the intent to rename the company Nintendo Pictures.
Of course, there’s also their burgeoning theme park business, with a future Super Nintendo World planned for Hollywood in 2023. While their existent Super Nintendo World parks had to launch in the middle of the pandemic, they had managed to prove popular and successful enough that Nintendo is pushing forward with the new business venture, with even more possible ways to push the popularity and visibility of their IP in the future.
Source: NintendoLife
