'Mario Kart 8 Deluxe' Sales Breaks Franchise's US Record
Nintendo's "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" has set a new record, selling almost half a million copies on its U.S. launch day alone.
According to GameSpot, the combined physical and digital sales of the series' newest racing video game reached the 459,000 mark when it debuted on April 28. In a press release, Nintendo announced that it is the fastest-selling "Mario Kart" game ever, defeating "Mario Kart Wii," which sold approximately 433,900 units back in 2008. Based on the record, the new game has a 45 percent attach rate, which means about one in two Switch owners in the U.S. bought a copy of "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" on the first day it was made available.
Furthermore, the U.S. sales of the Nintendo Switch hardware have reportedly reached 1.02 million units. This is quite a jump, as in mid-April, the numbers of units sold was 906,000. Worldwide, the Switch has sold a total of 2.74 million units since its launch in March.
Meanwhile, "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" still holds the record for the Switch's best-selling game to date, having sold 2.76 million units since its debut. In the U.S., it reportedly sold 925,000 copies in March alone.
"Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" has been getting positive reviews from players and critics alike. In a recent interview (via Games Radar), Nintendo's team of developers, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideki Konno and Tadashi Sugiyama, talked about their plans when they were first working on the game.
"Our original plan (for Mario Kart) didn't include Mario or karts. The game's roots lie in one of the launch titles for the SNES: F-Zero. The game was designed for single-player gameplay because of our focus on getting across the sense of speed and the size of the courses. It was a prototype for a multiplayer version of F-Zero that ended up being the starting point for Super Mario Kart, and from there we went through a period of trial and error to find what worked," they said.
