Mario Kart Tour finally gets a landscape orientation mode

By Jon Silman Published July 21, 2020

Mario Kart Tour, the mobile iteration of the ultra-popular Nintendo racing game featuring its marquee characters, has finally added a landscape mode.

“Players will have the option of racing in either the existing portrait mode or the new landscape mode! Landscape mode includes a new control layout, so find your favorite way to play!” Nintendo said on the official Mario Kart Tour Twitter account. The update also added a new control scheme for the layout.

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The game was released in September 2019 and drew criticism for only allowing portrait mode play, which made it feel clunky and unnatural. Also, it didn’t allow for what is arguably the franchise’s greatest feature: The ability to play against friends.

In a March update, Nintendo added a multiplayer feature, and eventually also the ability to race against friends. Nintendo continues to update the game with new characters and stages, and in the latest update, which went live on July 20, players can also invite friends to a created multiplayer room.

Earlier this year, Nintendo earned $1 billion in revenue from its mobile division, a sector that it was initially reluctant to enter. However, games such as Pokémon Go, where players use AR to “catch” Pokémon on their phones, proved wildly successful. That was followed up with another amazingly popular game called Fire Emblem Heroes, which accounted for the bulk of the revenue.

Other popular mobile Nintendo titles include Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Super Mario Run, both of which earn in the hundred-million-dollar range.

In July, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa told shareholders that its mobile business was “strategically important” and “is significant in that it provides a wide range of consumers a way other than Nintendo Switch to continue to enjoy playing games using Nintendo IP over a long period.”

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The Switch 2’s most important launch game isn’t Mario Kart World

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On June 5, the Nintendo Switch 2 will finally grace us with its presence. Nintendo is rolling out the big guns for the big day too, as it will launch the system with Mario Kart World. The racing game is all but assured to be a hit, giving the console a Breath of the Wild-like water cooler game that everyone will be playing at the same time. A lot is riding on that one game, as it has the burden of being the Switch 2's all-important killer app. If it fails to move millions of units in its first month, Nintendo might have to rethink its whole strategy for its new generation. While those are some high stakes, they're ones that Mario Kart World will realistically clear without issue.

With that in mind, there's another Switch 2 launch game coming on June 5 that's just as important, if not more so, from my perspective. That would be Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition. While it won't be crucial to Nintendo's bottom line, it's the first real test of the hardware, which looks to make a name for itself in a much more crowded portable landscape than the one the original Switch launched in.

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The Nintendo Switch 2 could get the full Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy

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Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade will make its way to the Nintendo Switch 2, but it might not be alone. In a Nintendo Creator's Voice interview, series director Naoki Hamaguchi confirmed that Remake Intergrade would come to Switch 2, something we already knew from an April announcement. It's a line about four minutes into the video that has caught gamers' attention: "And with the release of the Final Fantasy VII Remake series on Switch 2, it would make me very happy if two generations connect and share a bond over the characters."

Hamaguchi's phrasing suggests that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and the final entry in the series are not out of the realm of possibility for release on the Nintendo Switch 2 in the future. He said that porting the game to Nintendo Switch 2 is possible thanks to its upgraded specs. "We'd like players to feel the same excitement and surprise they felt playing the original game when they play the remake on Switch 2. With the power of Switch 2, we can now recreate Midgar with full specs."

Gaming

It’s beginning to feel like gaming isn’t for everyone

Mario and Peach racing in the foreground of a screenshot of Mario Kart World.

Over the years, the Nintendo brand has shifted to meet the times, but through it all, it's at least felt synonymous with one image (or turn of phrase, I guess): E for Everyone. Over the decades, the legendary developer and publisher has always had an ethos that has guided its games and consoles into the hands of gamers regardless of age and background. With the Switch 2, it's beginning to feel that that may not be true anymore.

The Switch 2 was fully unveiled earlier this month, and despite the fervor and excitement surrounding it, there's been a pretty noticeable tension around its various exorbitant prices. The system itself was tentatively priced at $450 and a bundle including Mario Kart World was coming in at $500 before the threat of US tariffs on every conceivable stretch of land -- even those with no human life on them -- forced Nintendo's hand, delaying preorders in the US and Canada. The thinking is that when they do become available, they will have already experienced a price hike, which is wild considering the fact that the newest Mario Kart game alone was being sold at the prohibitive cost of $80.