Nintendo’s next major mobile game, Mario Kart Tour, is not going to be launching this fiscal year, as had originally been promised. Nintendo today announced a delay of the game to Summer 2019, continuing a long tradition of just about none of their in-house mobile games actually meeting a release date they set for them.
Nintendo doesn’t actually specify many reasons for the delay, only saying that they are postponing the game for “quality reasons”, as well as better post-launch support. Judging by what they have said, it seems like they recognize the necessity of continued content for their mobile games in order to retain engagement and revenue from them post launch, something they failed at with Super Mario Run.
That said, for investors, this news can’t be too welcome, especially since it comes on the back of Nintendo revising its hardware forecast for the Switch downwards from the original ambitious target of 20 million units shipped for the year.