Nintendo delays Mario Kart mobile game until summer

We’ve heard basically nothing about Mario Kart Tour, the upcoming smartphone entry in the banana-flinging racing game series, since Nintendo announced it exactly a year ago. The game was pegged for a release before the end of March 2019, but it turns out it’s not ready — Nintendo is delaying it til summer.

The decision has been made “in order to improve quality of the application and expand the content offerings after launch,” according to a statement contained within Nintendo’s quarterly earnings released today. It’s the second major Nintendo title hit with a delay this month; last week the company announced that the much-anticipated Metroid Prime 4’s development is being completely rebooted.

Worried Nintendo fans might want to remind themselves of one of the more famous quotes from Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” Perhaps he wasn’t thinking of constantly updated free-to-play mobile games with in-app purchases, given that he was talking around the time of the Nintendo 64, but the point stands. Probably.