Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is an unstoppable sales juggernaut. The game has surpassed 35 million copies sold since it debuted in 2017. From April 2020 through March 2021 alone, Nintendo sold 10.62 million copies of the mascot racer. That makes Mario Kart 8 Deluxe one of the best-selling games through that period, even when compared against some of biggest releases of the year.
For comparison, Sony confirmed that Ghost of Tsushima, one of its best-selling games of last year, sold 6.5 million copies through March. That makes Ghost a huge hit — but it doesn’t come close to the sales of an old Nintendo kart-racing game. This means Mario Kart’s 12-month period starting in April 2020 likely also outsold games like Final Fantasy VII Remake.
We know that, in the United States, the physical copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe alone outsold Final Fantasy VII Remake and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales during 2020. But Miles came out late in the year and has continued to sell well into 2021, so it’s possible that it is approaching Mario Kart-like results at this point.
Not bad for a Wii U rehash.
What this really illustrates, however, is just how evergreen certain Nintendo properties are. Mario Kart is the best example of this trend, but it’s not the only one. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold 5 million copies during Nintendo’s last fiscal year. And through that same period, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey sold 4.86 million and 3.42 million copies, respectively.
I mean, 2018’s Super Mario Party sold 4.69 million copies alone last year.
These are numbers that publishers would kill to get for their new releases. For Nintendo (in the case of Mario Party), it’s almost happening without any real effort.