UK Charts: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Races To Pole Position Once Again

When the last time MK8 was number one?

Imagine if SMB3 were still No. 1 in the DREAMCAST era.

Personally, I see MK8's "dominance" as a leading indicator of the sorry state of the sport. the fact that Nintendo themselves arent a couple of superior titles past this is unprecedented in my life time, and not in a good way.

(essentially, the prevailing logic is we cant have a sequel let alone another racing game like fzero in the mix because this 10 year old game is still selling well. 🙄 truly hope it lasts forever, Nintendo. I'll be elsewhere doing other things.)

@-wc- It's indicitive of how well the Switch is still selling. Your perspective is on the right lines, but slightly too narrow.

When I worked at Gamestation we sold lots of handhelds in the summer holidays which might be why MK8 is back on top during the summer lull of releases.

@GrailUK

I'm not sure I get your point so I'll respond with some pointed yet non sarcastic, sort of probing questions:

The switch has sold so well that it's too risky make a new mario kart game for it?

How about one exclusive mario kart game on the platform? This one was already how old when Switch debuted?

If "during the most successful hardware era ever" is not the right time to take a chance on a MK sequel, let alone a Pilotwings, Kid Icarus, Fzero, Warioland (et al) game, then when? Do I have to wait for Nintendo's next "failure" console to get any (personally) interesting games again?

thanks ☺️

@-wc- But but bu-!!!! Mario Kart Live Home Circuit!! ...................... ..... .. yeah..

PS. I had to use Google to remember the title of it.

@-wc- I'll step in for this.

The Switch has sold so well, so they extended it's life with two additional years of content around the time a new game would have released for the Switch.

This is largely done to maximise banked ROI and pure profit from further sales to not only fund more niche games for the Switch and broaden it's appeal, but also make the next Mario Kart, which is almost assured to launch around the next platform.

As history has shown, Mario Kart is a mass appeal, truly evergreen title on a successful system, and its launch timing is imperative. Therefore, keeping resources back and not releasing a Mario Kart exclusively for Switch means there is no potential delay in the timing of a new title for a new system, and thus springboarding what will hopefully be a successful platform.

Your second point, there is an exclusive Mario Kart game on Switch: Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, which was licensed to Velan Studios by Nintendo. As of December 2022, it had sold less than 2m units. Now sure this is largely down to its higher price, complexity etc. but it also stands in line with sequels to mega popular games on the same platform either flatlining or falling behind. Look at Tears of the Kingdom compared to Breath of the Wild, or 3D World to Odyssey.

Now sure there are exceptions to that rule, Kirby and the Forgotten Land for example, and Pokemon, but those titles also occupy a different space to Mario Kart.

Mario Kart is, by design, a game with infinite longevity.

Much like how many live service games go for a decade or longer, Mario Kart, and to a lesser extent Splatoon, Animal Crossing and Smash Bros., are games that you get on your system, get DLC, and thats your fill until the next platform.

For the mass market, the people driving the profits and the sales, spending some of your money on a sequel to a game that wont hit as high, when that money can be better spent on making more niche titles that draw in people like us on this site, is the play. The mass market gets their fill, we get our niche games.

And that has been the true strength of the Switch brand. All the money from Animal Crossing, Zelda, Mario, Mario Kart, Smash etc. selling so well so consistently hasn't just been funnelled into the next game from that same studio in the way Sony and many other companies do it, it goes to games like a Bayonetta, Advance Wars, Mario & Luigi, Pikmin, Metroid.

In other companies, the profit from God of War goes to the next God of War and thats your lot.

I swear, Albus Dumbledore himself cast a charm spell on Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

@-wc- I think Nintendo are just plain pretending the Wii U didn't happen. So MK8 IS the Switch Mario Kart. And to be fair, it is for the vast majotity of Switch users (less than 10% had a Wii U! Bonkers.) They mentioned a couple of years a go that they finally had an idea for the next game. But I dunno, even if they did release it this Christmas, everyone would be wondering why they didn't wait till Switch 2. I don't think they can ever win (but then, when you see the profits from the Switch era, I don't think they take much guidance from the internet, thank God.)

Whilest MK8D keeps on selling (and if you can run switch games on the replacement) we are not getting a new MarioKart anytime soon.
If it's still selling why bother?
Look at GTA V that came out in September 2013, whilst MK8D came out in May 2017 (MK8 was May 2014) still got another 3 years before a sequel needs to be even announced

@RubyCarbuncle yeah, the unfairness is the biggest downside of Mario Kart 8. But it's still much better in that regard comparing to previous Mario Kart games. I played MK7 not long ago and the balance is pretty awful. And don't even get me started on MK64 or older ones. MK8 showed how unfair and boring the older ones were.

I still don’t have Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch 😱

@Haruki_NLI
Mario Kart Live is a spin-off, it hardly counts as some kind of legitimate sequel to Mario Kart 8 and honestly qualifies as more of a toy than a video game.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe bouncing back stronger than it's rubber band AI. It's almost as if it found a blue shell and dodged a bunch of bananas...

Probably means good Switch sales. I'd bet MK8 won't leave the charts until the Switch completely stops selling.

@Haruki_NLI

"The Switch has sold so well, so they extended it's life with two additional years of content around the time a new game would have released for the Switch."

That's a generous way to say they put an already geriatric (8 years) old game on life support for 2 years.

"This is largely done to maximise banked ROI and pure profit from further sales to not only fund more niche games for the Switch and broaden it's appeal, but also make the next Mario Kart, which is almost assured to launch around the next platform."

I'm a gamer, not a banker. I miss the days when we thought of Nintendo as a group of brilliant creative minds making mind blowing games, rather than a bunch of uptight rich guys in suits trying not to rock the boat.

*"As history has shown, Mario Kart is a mass appeal, truly evergreen title on a successful system, and its launch timing is imperative.
Therefore, keeping resources back and not releasing a Mario Kart exclusively for Switch means there is no potential delay in the timing of a new title for a new system, and thus springboarding what will hopefully be a successful platform."*

they could easily have released MK9 in 2019 (5 years after 8,) only 2 years into the switch's lifecycle, and had plenty of time (6 years) to make another game for the switch 2 launch if necessary. (which btw will be the first time a Mkart game was released at console's launch.)

"Your second point, there is an exclusive Mario Kart game on Switch: Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit,"

That is a toy, not a videogame. If "the exception that proves the rule" has ever applied, it is here. 😅

as far as the rest, you may be right about the business end. OTOH, wide mainstream appeal is a race to the bottom, every time, and I'm seeing it happen with my own eyes, here.

PS - Are you sure that "niche games" deliver "mass appeal?" it feels almost like a contradiction in terms, and I'm just not seeing the throughline of "no sequels for mariokart in ten years + niche games = profit."

if they are truly saving money on sequels to deliver to "niche" tastes, where is my fzero, pilotwings, mario paint, mother 3, kid icarus, etc etc?

anyway sorry for the heavy quoting, its easy to be accused of cherry picking responses and i like to be specific. cheers ✌️

@XenoShaun

I had to use google to remember what it even is! 😂 ✌️

@GrailUK

it feels like if you were part of the wii u era fandom (a mere several million loyal individuals,) Nintendo wishes to ignore you, as well. 💀

Nintendo is "profiting" their way right out of my heart (and there's not much else in there tbh 😅)

PS - i also do not think they should release a switch 1 MK9 at this point either, unless it is the "crossover game" this time. which, maybe 🤔

@westman98 Is it a toy, or is it a video game? Is the Switch a handheld, or a home console? Is the PSVR2 it's own platform with exclusives, or an accessory? Is the the GameBoy Colour a new platform or a revision?

We can try and pigeon-hole everything into neat little compartments to suit our narratives, but those pigeons are long dead.

My take? It's a video game. It comes with software to be played, on a games console that plays video games, with inputs received by the software on the dedicated hardware platform that are sent by the player. You can say its a toy, but that thing came with a game attached.

@-wc- I read that whole thing, and I meant to say wide appeal, as in casting a wide net, not mass appeal, thats me getting my terms mixed up. Whoopsie.

As for this: "I'm a gamer, not a banker. I miss the days when we thought of Nintendo as a group of brilliant creative minds making mind blowing games, rather than a bunch of uptight rich guys in suits trying not to rock the boat."

See, I'm the opposite. I'm a businessman and economist, not really a gamer anymore, and that's because I spent years studying economics and business analysis, and once you look behind that curtain, your whole worldview changes, and it's not great.

Thing is, you dont care about how a business is doing overall, and that's absolutely fine. Except you do, because under capitalism and our societal conditioning, every decision you make, every job you have, exists to just fuel the machine. You go earn money to spend it to live, and if those businesses drop, our way of life collapses.

It absolutely sucks, like absolutely bites, but sadly, that's the way it is, and so that's how I look at the world.

There's no ethical consumption under capitalism after all, sadly.

And now I'm depressed again. Oh dear.

Anyway, ethical and societal conditioning tangent aside, yeah, Nintendo is a business, they wanna make money. I mean at the end of the day the only way we can impact that is to.....not give them money, en masse. But we could also collectively decide one day that money has no value and just start over again and reset every currency, but we wont, because not everyone thinks the same.

Best you can do is just hope. And that sucks, it really does. I'm not getting the games I like anymore, so I jumped ship a while ago. I also saw the way the industry was going and decided I'd rather watch from the sidelines to see if I can snipe some golden parachutes before they land

@Haruki_NLI

Cheers, friend. ☺️ It's interesting, we have a really similar perspective in some ways, and wildly different in others. I rather enjoyed reading your reply, and while I don't have a ton further to say right now, I will be thinking on this and maybe getting back to you down the line. 👍 thanks for playing.

I wonder how many people are left out there who don’t have Mario kart 8 (but want to purchase it)

@-wc- I'm just happy they found a way for a lot of software overlooked on Wii U to be successful. It deserved to be. I'm never under any illusion that they cater for me, like I deserve some special treatment for being a fan lol. I'm a simple guy. If I like something, I'll buy it. If I don't, I don't. (It's just a shame there is too much I like lol.)

The game that keeps on selling, amazing!!

@Haruki_NLI
I don't actually think that Mario Kart Live is not a video game, my point is that it is a spin-off title that was never going to sell anywhere remotely as much as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in the same way that nobody expects Mario Golf to sell as much as Super Mario Odyssey.

I still haven't played this game. Is it worth buying?

@Alpha008 There's always going to be more people who want it as long as Switchs are being sold.

@8bitKirby these are UK charts on a UK based website, if you're not interested why bother clicking?