Mario Kart in numbers

The possibility of a new Mario Kart coming to Switch (besides Mario Kart Live) comes up in the internet quite frequently. That is because of the enormous success that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has in Nintendo's hybrid console, being currently the highest selling game on the platform.

A game always sees its highest sales numbers on launch window. A potential Mario Kart 9 out on Swich could get a very high number and double the franchise's sales on the console quickly instead of the "slow" and constant growth of the current version. Slow just compared to what I said it could be, because Mario Kart 8 DX continues to show up in best selling lists. This discussion started with Dom, no Twitter. Follow him.

To back my thought, I went after some of the franchise's attach rate data, that is the relation of how many games were sold and how many consoles were sold. As we can see in the graphic below and considering just home consoles, the attach rate grown with each generation. In parallel we can see the same pattern for the portable systems. 

The numbers for Switch are kind of between home consoles and portables when we analyze its growth, which kind of makes sense, it being a hybrid console. Also it is good to remember that Switch's numbers aren't final as it is still active.

Just in comparison, the best selling game on PS4, GTA V, has a lower then 19% attach rate and the best selling exclusive, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, has 15%.

Well, I talked about doubling numbers quickly. To do this comparison, I went after attach rate data for the first period of sales for each game. This next graphic must be considered knowing some data are hard to know with precision. The "period" I considered was from launch until the end of that fiscal year (march 31st of the following year) and that makes some games, like Mario Kart 8 DX, have a ten month "initial period" and others, like Mario Kart 7, have just four. Still, I think it is a nice comparison.

As we can see, the initial attach rate have grown with each new mainline game, reaching 50%, which is an excellent number for any game. Comparing the two graphics it is noticeable that in some cases the value between the initial period and at the end goes up and, in others, goes down. I believe that has to do with some factors like the quality of the game and this quality compared to other game options available in the console.

Observing the franchise's growing adoption it is not a surprise to see Mario Kart to be on top of the best selling titles for Switch, Wii U and 3DS, the three most recent Nintendo hardware. It is also in second place on Wii's list, behind only Wii Sports, and in third on DS.

Back to my point, how could we try to predict, in some way, the sales number of the first period of a possible Mario Kart 9 on Switch? Let's look to other Switch's best selling games initial attach rate following the same logic (period from launch to the end of fiscal year). This would not be valid for Animal Crossing, that was released only ten days before the end of fiscal year, so it is considered the following quarter as well (ending June 30th 2020). As for Breath of the Wild, it will be considered thirteen months because it was released along side with the switch and also in the last month of the fiscal year.

Remembering that there is different periods for each game in the next graphic we can notice that it is easier to get a high attach rate in the early days of console life, as the biggest numbers are from the three games that launched in Switch's first year, but that does not mean that those games sold more in absolute numbers. Animal Crossing saw an enormous sales number, rising quickly to second place on Switch's best selling list and still has "only" a 36.5% initial attach rate.

After three and a half years, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best selling switch game with 26.74 million units sold (as of june 2020), keeping the high attach rate of 43.5%.

We could, based on the second graphic, say that in the first period of life, a new Mario Kart would reach 50% of the consoles sold, but, as we saw on the latest graphic, that initial number tends to go down as the console's life cycle goes further. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a huge worldwide sensation this year, so I wouldn't bet that a new Mario Kart could reach that number. I think that it would be closer to Pokémon's, that, according to the last report, has basically 30% attach rate after eight months in the market.

Nintendo's own forecast for the current fiscal year is to sell 19 million units of Switch until march 31st 2021, putting total sold units on the 80 million mark. If we use the 30% I talked about last paragraph, it would mean that a new Mario Kart could sell 24 million units in its first period, basically doubling franchise's sales numbers in the console.

Just to be clear I am not an analyst, I just like the subject, and I only rely on my little knowledge and some guessing. It is very likely that I am wrong, but I believe that the argument that "Nintendo doesn't need to do a new Mario Kart. MK8, which is a Wii U game, is still selling very well" is weak. Nintendo doesn't NEED to do anything it doesn't want to, but it is a private company and goes after financial efficiency, something that a new Mario Kart would easily provide.

To sum up, I really think that we might have Mario Kart 9 still on Switch, specifically by 2022, when the series becomes 30. I know Nintendo does not always do special things no these kind of dates, but this is the biggest hiatus of the franchise and, as I tried to prove in this post, I believe it is very economically attractive for the company.