Mario Kart 8 Deluxe now has 38.74 million copies sold, surpassing Mario Kart Wii, which has around 37.4 million sold. It's also the best selling Switch game, with Animal Crossing: New Horizons a few million units behind.
I guess it's clear why we haven't seen Mario Kart 9 yet, huh?
I wonder if this metric counts Virtual Console sales of say, Super Mario Kart or Mario Kart 64? Or sales derived from the Super Nintendo Classic Mini System?
Regardless, VERY impressive numbers for this game!
@GameDadGrant I was curious and did a quick search. The original Super Mario Kart sold between 8 and 9 million copies, and the Super Nintendo Classic, at least back in 2018, sold about 10 million units. So, I think we'd have to see something around 20 million copies on Virtual Console to make up the difference. The closest rival to MKWii and MK8 Deluxe would be Mario Kart DS at 23 million.
The SNES Mini sold 368,913 units within its first four days on sale in Japan.[36] By the end of October 2017, it had sold more than 2 million units worldwide.[37] By its fiscal year 2017 report, ending March 31, 2018, the SNES Classic had sold more than 5 million units.[38] Combined sales of the NES and SNES Classic editions by September 30, 2018 exceeded 10 million units.[39]
Hmm, if we're counting all versions though, it would make sense to add in Mario Kart 8 Wii U, which sold like 8 or 9 million copies, even though it is technically not the exact same game.
Switch really did give some of those games a second life. Or, a primary life. It solid like 4 times more on Switch than Wii U!
Yeah, hardcore Nintendo fans complain about "having to rebuy" these Wii U ports, but honestly? Not many people had a Wii U, let alone played the games. So it's definitely in Nintendo's interest to port (er...up-port?) these Wii U games to their new system. Kinda surprised the Switch version of MK8 "only" sold 4 times as much as the original. The Switch certainly has more than 4 times as many units as the Wii U, right?
I actually kind of surprised it took this long. It feels like Mario Kart 8 is one of the top selling games every month, in perpetuity. Really shows how big the Wii was.
I just checked and it’s actually pretty much the same, at least as far back as 2018. I didn’t have time to check more recent numbers, but it looks like MK8 on Wii U had about a 47% attach ratio, while Deluxe had about a 45% attach ratio in 2018. So if the Switch has sold something like 90 million units, and MK8D has sold almost 40 million, that all starts to sound about right. Basically someone at Nintendo really did their math, lol. I’m surprised it’s not higher, but we have also never seen a price drop on the Switch. If this ever happens then I expect these numbers to skyrocket even further.
