Mario Kart Tour will Drop Its Gacha Elements in Favor of a Spotlight Shop

Mario Kart Tour’s been out for a few years and is a mobile title that introduced several new tracks to the Mario Kart series, like Sydney Sprint (now DLC in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe). The game also had a pretty significant infestation of gacha elements, where you’d have to spend premium currency (Rubies, in this case) to roll for new karts, gliders, or characters.

It’s the topic of the gacha that we’re here to discuss. Towards the end of September 2022, Mario Kart Tour’s gacha will be axed entirely and replaced with something completely different, known as the Spotlight Shop. You can view the original announcement tweet below.

Here’s a peek at #MarioKartTour‘s update coming late September! Battle mode will be added, along with a Spotlight Shop, where you can exchange rubies for drivers, karts, and gliders! Also, pipes you can fire by using rubies will be removed. See the notification for details. pic.twitter.com/brsI1tH8YD

— Mario Kart Tour (@mariokarttourEN) September 2, 2022

Instead, what will be taking its place is the Spotlight Shop, where you just buy whichever of the Spotlight items you want directly. No more hoping that you got a good pull or despair that you pulled stuff you already own; just buy which of them you want. It’s unclear what this means for the future of Mario Kart Tour.

If you remember from yesterday, Nintendo announced that Dragalia Lost, one of their other mobile games, will be shutting down at the end of November 2022. All of its new content had finished, and the game is currently on a sand timer, waiting for its shutdown, repeating old banners. With Mario Kart Tour, things could go either way. But whether the game will die or live on, we don’t know. Still, this could simply be a new way to extend the game’s life.

Comparatively, Fire Emblem Heroes, another such gacha run by Nintendo, still has those elements within its gameplay, and has new and returning characters on banners often. Whatever happens to Mario Kart Tour, though, we’ll update you on what that will be when new information is released. Mario Kart Tour is free for download on iOS and Android devices.