Mario Kart 8: Deluxe was one of the top-selling games in the U.S. last month across Nintendo Switch 1 and 2. Huh? Now in its 11th year, the racing game refuses to go gently into that good night even with a next-gen sequel available. Mario Kart World may be the franchise’s future, but Mario Kart 8 continues to hold on like no Nintendo game ever has before.
MK8 was ranked the seventh best-selling Nintendo platform game in June when the Switch 2 launched. In July, it shot up to the fourth spot with Mario Kart World falling to sixth, reports Circana game research director Mat Piscatella. A few things are going on here to explain the bizarre swap. First, Nintendo only shares physical sales data, so we don’t know how much either game sold relative to the other in terms of digital downloads. Plus, the digital version of Mario Kart World is part of a discounted Switch 2 bundle, and none of those unit sales are getting tracked either.
So is Mario Kart 8 actually outselling Mario Kart World? Almost definitely not. But it is still selling surprisingly well at a time when you’d think everyone who doesn’t already own the game would just wait to jump directly into Mario Kart World. Mario Kart 8 sold around 600,000 copies globally last quarter, which included the Switch 2’s launch month. It seems likely to continue selling into the holiday season. Another million copies before the end of the year doesn’t seem out of the question, which would probably make it a more popular game in that time period than most of the third-party releases publishers raced to port to the Switch 2.
Switch 2 is selling way ahead of the original
Despite only two months on the market, Switch 2 is already the best-selling console year-to-date in the U.S., according to Piscatella. And it’s already far ahead of where its predecessor was at the same time in its launch cycle. “Nintendo Switch 2 has now surpassed 2 million units sold in the US life-to-date,” he reported. “It is currently 75% ahead of the unit sales pace set by the original Nintendo Switch.”
But many Switch 2 games have already dropped off the best-sellers list. June included Cyberpunk 2077, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, Street Fighter 6, and Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster all in the top 10. None of them are still there in July. While Donkey Kong Bananza and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 both dominated, every third-party game is gone besides Minecraft and Hogwarts Legacy, neither of which are Switch 2 exclusives (Minecraft doesn’t even have a Switch 2 version).
With over 150 million Switch 1 consoles sold, it’s not surprising that cross-platform Nintendo exclusives are continuing to own the board. But it comes amid fresh reports that the company has been slow to get Switch 2 dev kits to third-party developers, suggesting they just release their game on Switch 1 instead. For now the Switch 2 is still mostly another Nintendo machine for playing Nintendo games (and Minecraft). And in that arena the company’s back catalog continues to have a major edge, with Mario Kart 8 still taking the crown.
