The smartphone version of Mario Kart has been delayed until Summer 2019

Details about Mario Kart Tour are very thin on the ground

Mario Kart Tour - the mobile version of Nintendo's beloved racing game - has been hit by delays. In Nintendo's most recent quarterly earnings report, released on Friday, the company confirmed that the game had been delayed until Summer 2019. “In the smart-device business, Mario Kart Tour was scheduled to be released this fiscal year, but in order to improve quality of the application and expand the content offerings after launch, the release date has been moved to summer 2019,” said Nintendo in the report. Mario Kart Tour was announced in January 2018, for iOS and Android devices, and its release date was originally intended for the first quarter of 2019. Those plans have been hit by the proverbial red shell though, and things appear to have changed. A logo for the game was released along with the original announcement, but basically no other details about the game have been come out since then. Despite having a long history with portable gaming, including the Game Boy, DS and Switch, Nintendo has been very slow to get into the mobile games arena. Several Pokemon titles, including Pokemon Go, were developed by third parties, but the first proper Nintendo mobile game was 2016's Miitomo, followed by Mario, Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem games. The Mario Kart series began all the way back in 1992 with Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo. There have been six titles released for home consoles over the years, along with three portable games and four arcade cabinet version co-developed with Namco. The latest installment was 2017's Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the Switch.