Mario Kart World can't quite shake Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Nintendo sales reports show

Signs of a Switch 1 game's strengths...and hints of its Switch 2 sequel's weakness

Mario Kart World. Screenshot: Nintendo

Nintendo’s nine-year-old Mario Kart 8 Deluxe remains a strong seller for the company, so much so that it just might be eating into the sales of its Switch 2 sequel, according to a Game File analysis of recent Nintendo sales data.

• The older Mario Kart game, which launched for Switch in April 2017, sold 450,000 copies—at $60/copy—between April 1 and June 30 of this year.

• Mario Kart World, the open-world sequel that launched in June 2025, sold 690,000 copies—largely if not entirely at $80/copy—in that same stretch.

That’s a lower total for the older game, but the race has been a stubbornly close between the new Mario Kart and its nearly decade-old predecessor that somehow keeps finding more people to buy it.

Platform differences alone don’t fully explain the older game’s resilience. Deluxe, like most original Switch games can also run on Switch 2 and therefore has two huge installed based to sell into, compared to Mario Kart World having just the Switch 2. But Deluxe has also facing the kind of displacement that could befall any game that gets a heavily marketed new sequel. That has not happened.

Nintendo’s newest sales figures, released last week, show both the older Mario Kart’s enduring strength and offer at least a warning of the new game’s potential weakness.

• Sales of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, relative to sales of the original Switch (this is key, as I’ll explain), have actually increased since the launch of the Switch 2 and the launch of that system’s newer Mario Kart.

• Sales of Mario Kart World, relative to sales of the Switch 2, have dropped dramatically, since the Nintendo stopped bundling it with its new hardware.

There are a lot of variables involved in this comparison. I’ll get to them below.

But, at first blush, the contest between the two games raises some key questions for Nintendo and perhaps the broader gaming industry.

• What happens when gamers can choose between two games that run on the same system, when one is polished and costs $60 and one is similar but has the more modern price of $80?

• What happens if a sequel in a mega-franchise can’t eclipse its predecessor?

• And, just for Nintendo: What happens when Nintendo has to compete with itself, as the Switch 2 line-up will have to as it faces down the mighty best-selling, backwards compatible best of the original Switch?

To sort this out, I’ve crunched Nintendo’s numbers for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Kart World, Animal Crossing New Horizons, SuperSmash Bros. Ultimate. And I’ve tried to figure out just what’s been happening with Switch 1 hits on the Switch 2.

Here’s what I’ve found: