Mario Kart game announces shutdown just days after Nintendo Switch death day confirmed

Just days after confirming plans to kill the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo has returned with more bad news. One of its Mario Kart games is being shut down permanently.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is now over a year old and its current first-party library actually makes it worth the upgrade. When The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake launches later this year, that’ll seal the deal.

For now the first Nintendo Switch will still see support, but by 2027, it’ll join plenty of other consoles in the grave.

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Adding insult to injury, Nintendo has now announced plans to shelve a beloved Mario Kart title in just a few months, and when it’s gone, you won’t even be able to play it offline.

Mario Kart players have until September to say their goodbyes

Earlier today, Wednesday, July 8, the official Mario Kart Tour X account said: “Service for the Mario Kart Tour game ends on Sept. 29 at 11:00 p.m. PT / Sept. 30 at 8:00 a.m. CEST.”

It continued: Thank you for your support throughout the years. For info on how rubies and the Mario Kart Tour Gold Pass will be handled moving forward, see in-game notifications or FAQ below.”

Mario Kart Tour is the free mobile version of Mario Kart that you can play online with other players from around the world.

It featured tracks based on real-life locations, and some of those tracks eventually made their way into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe through the Booster Pack DLC. The game also boasted several unique designs for Mario, Luigi and the rest of the cast, as well as characters not featured in mainline Mario Kart games.

Unfortunately, like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, these mobile games clearly have a shelf life and now it’s Mario Kart Tour’s turn to bite the bullet.

However, unlike Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, there’s seemingly no plan in place to keep the game playable after it gets shut down.

In the FAQ section on Nintendo’s website, one article says: “An offline version [of Mario Kart Tour] is not scheduled for release.

This means when it’s gone, it’s really gone, and fans aren’t happy about it at all.

“Realllllly sucks that an offline/complete version isn’t being made like what was done with Pocket Camp … all my progress will just be gone forever now”, said SuperMarioOOC85 in response.

“Please make an offline complete edition as you did with the Animal Crossing pocket game. You can even charge money for that. Just give us a way to still play all the tracks. The game has so much content, it's very sad that everything will be gone,” added TheLarry98.

It’s been a terrible couple of weeks for video game death days. PlayStation announced plans to kill physical media by 2028, Xbox has let go of several studios, and now Nintendo is simultaneously announcing the demise of the Nintendo Switch and Mario Kart Tour.

On the bright side, the new Knockout Tours that were recently added to Mario Kart World are pretty fun, even though we would have preferred some all-new tracks instead.

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