Mario Kart Tour Landscape Mode and New Controls Announced

Mario Kart Tour will now be allowing players to use both portrait and landscape mode while playing the game. Nintendo made the following tweet about MKT on the MarioKartTourEN twitter account:

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the content that’s planned for the next #MarioKartTour update. Players will have the option of racing in either the existing portrait mode or the new landscape mode! Landscape mode includes a new control layout, so find your favorite way to play!

Here's a sneak peek at some of the content that's planned for the next #MarioKartTour update. Players will have the option of racing in either the existing portrait mode or the new landscape mode! Landscape mode includes a new control layout, so find your favorite way to play! pic.twitter.com/KchRRfnGtj

— Mario Kart Tour (@mariokarttourEN) July 20, 2020

When the game originally released on mobile devices back in September 2019, MKT was strictly portrait mode (players had to hold their phone directly up and down). Now it looks like the newest update to the mobile game will allow players to turn their phone sideways to play the game as well.

It is somewhat surprising that Nintendo didn’t have this option at the game’s release. With so many players coming from the series past titles, you’d think they’d prioritize having a landscape option similar to other games in the series.

At this point, we’re not too sure what the new control layout will consist of really. A fair amount of players had originally complained about the game’s control system at launch, so perhaps this update will help to remedy that and bring some new players back in giving the mobile game another chance.

Recent news has come out that Nintendo wasn’t too thrilled with how Mario Kart Tour and other Nintendo mobile games were performing on the App Stores. This may in part be due to the fact that Mario Run was not free to play, but instead free to start. Animal Crossing Pocket Camp seemed to not be as much of a hit as they’d hoped as well, but there wasn’t really much promotion done for the mobile title (that we saw at the time) as well.

With Mario Kart Tour, the game had a fairly decent adoption rate, but many players fell off and lost interest as time went on. The gameplay itself was fun, but a lot of the gacha mechanics and the heavily micro-transaction focused system was a turn off for many.

The Mario Kart Tour update is set to launch on both Google Play and the Apple Appstore tomorrow, July 21, 2020.