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Nintendo has said that Switch title Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the fastest ever game in the series in the US.
The platform holder says 459,000 copies were sold across physical and digital on its first day of release in the US on April 28th. That represents at attach ratio of around 45 per cent.
The number beats the 434k units sold by Mario Kart Wii in 2008. The original Mario Kart 8 for Wii U shifted around 885k units in its first five weeks.
The game has also raced to No.1 in the UK Top 40 on its first week of release this week. Amazingly, it’s Nintendo’s first All Formats No.1 since way back in early 2011, when Pokemon White topped the listings in week nine. It’s also the first Mario game to claim the top chart spot since Mario Kart Wii in 2008.
In other Switch news, Nintendo has told The Wall Street Journal that it has been forced to ship fresh Switch hardware supplies to the US by air, with a spokesperson confirming: We carried some of the Switches by plane in March to serve our customers more promptly.”
The site estimates that this would have cost Nintendo in the region of an additional $45 per unit, significantly eating into its profits.
Nintendo sold over 2m Switch consoles worldwide in its first month on shelves, according to its latest fiscal year earnings report, hitting 2.74m units as of March 31st. That beats recent analyst expectations from SuperData, which pegged the console’s global sales figures at just 2.4m.
