Nintendo’s Mario Kart Tour (Free) announcements usually involve a new tour or in rare circumstances, improvements to the core gameplay through control enhancements, and more. Ever since it hit iOS and Android worldwide, we’ve had loads of tours arrive, and new tracks even be ported to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Today, Nintendo announced through an in-game news alert that Mario Kart Tour will be removing the gacha elements to replace the pipe system with a Spotlight Shop. This shop will let you use rubies to get karts, drivers, and gliders. This change will occur late this month. In addition to that major change, Battles are being added to the game in both single player and multiplayer. Battles begin on October 5th.

Battles will see balloons attached to player karts. Your goal is to pop your opponents’ balloons while protecting your own balloons. The update bringing in this will also see Gold Races, available to Gold Pass subscribers, be removed. There are many ways this update and news are both surprising. It is going to be interesting to see how the game’s revenue and rankings on the grossing charts changes following the major update and changes to monetization. If you’ve not played Mario Kart Tour for a while or are considering playing it now, it is available for free on the App Store and Google Play. Be sure to check out the thread in our forums for more discussion around Mario Kart Tour. Share your friend codes here in our thread for friend codes for Mario Kart Tour. What do you think of Mario Kart Tour removing gacha elements?