Mario Kart Tour's Release Delayed, Nintendo Confirms

Mario Kart Tour, the smartphone debut of Nintendo's hit racing series, has been delayed. In an earnings report, the publisher confirmed the mobile game would not hit its intended release window of the financial year 2018/19, which ends in March.

Instead, the company now says Mario Kart Tour will launch in the summer of 2019. Explaining the delay, Nintendo said it wanted to "improve [the] quality of the application and expand the content offerings after launch," and hence needed more development time. Following this news, Nintendo also announced that it's partnered with another mobile game developer, LINE, which will be working on Dr. Mario World. That's due out early this summer.

Mario Kart Tour was announced last year, though few details are known at present. All that's been revealed is the logo you can see above.

For a long time, Nintendo refused to bring its franchises to mobile devices in part because the company maintained that it would rather focus on its own dedicated gaming devices. However, this stance changed, and Nintendo has already released a few mobile games and apps, including Miitopia, Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.

The latest game in the racing series is Nintendo Switch's Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has now sold over 15 million copies worldwide. For more on that title, read our Mario Kart 8 Deluxe review.