Mario Kart Tour for mobile devices announced by Nintendo

Nintendo has announced its next mobile game, revealing a version of Mario Kart is being developed from smartphone devices. Called Mario Kart Tour, the game is set to be released during the next financial year, ending march 2019.

"The chequered flag has been raised and the finish line is near. A new mobile application is now in development: Mario Kart Tour," proclaimed the announcement sent out by Nintendo's Twitter channels.

Nintendo had been keeping quiet about its mobile plans after releasing Fire Emblem Heroes and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp - the last of its confirmed projects - last year.

To date Nintendo has released four mobile games developed in tandem with DeNA: the two aforementioned, as well as Super Mario Run and Miitomo. Global hit Pokémon Go was a Pokémon Company venture.

Miitomo was an experimental social app released in March 2016, which Nintendo recently announced would be shutting down in May. It did not offer a reason as to why, though it is reasonable to assume its number of users has dropped off significantly.

Mario Kart Tour's announcement follow some impressive sales figures for Nintendo's 2017 titles, and new console Nintendo Switch, which managed to outsell previous console the Wii U in just 10 months.

In addition to this many Switch games boasted incredible sales numbers. Super Mario Odyssey sold nine million copies in two months, while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 7.33 million copies, meaning it is owned by nearly half of all 15 million Switch owners.

Mario Kart has always been one of Nintendo's most popular franchises. Mario Kart 8 was Wii U's top-selling game, Mario Kart 7 remains the best-selling 3DS game and Mario Kart Wii was the best-selling game on Wii behind only Wii Sports, which came bundled with most consoles.

Mario Kart DS was not the top-selling DS game, but still sold more than 23 million copies, so...

Nintendo's mobile games are all free-to-play, but come with elements of microtransactions.