Mario Kart Tour ends gacha in favor of a Fortnite-style item shop

Nintendo has announced that it's removing gacha elements from Mario Kart Tour, to be replaced by an item shop where you can directly purchase what you want.

In an in-game message, the devs explain that a Mario Kart Tour update set to be released "around the end of September" will introduce a Spotlight Shop where you can directly purchase drivers, karts, and gliders using rubies, the game's premium currency. Content in the shop will coincide with new tours starting after October 5, 2022, and the shop will feature both new items and items that have appeared in past tours.

While there aren't any further details on this Spotlight Shop yet, it sounds in effect like a Fortnite-style item shop, where purchasable items will rotate through availability over time.

Nintendo also confirms that "the pipe you can fire by using rubies will be removed." The pipes are a pretty traditional gacha system, allowing you to collect a random item by spending a few rubies, or collect ten items by spending rubies all at once at a slight discount.

Gacha mechanics are effectively the same as loot boxes, which have faced criticism from both players and regulatory bodies over the past several years. Whether this marks a broader shift away from gacha for Nintendo's mobile games remains to be seen. The gacha-driven Dragalia Lost is set to shut down later this year, though Fire Emblem Heroes, which has reportedly earned over $1 billion in revenue, shows no signs of ending or changing its randomized monetization model.

The big September Mario Kart Tour update will also introduce battles in single-player and multiplayer variations, which effectively mimic the battle mode in traditional Mario Kart games. You and your opponents have a number of balloons attached to your karts, and you try to pop other racers' balloons while defending your own.

Dataminers are starting to believe that Mario Kart Tour is on the way to PC.