Nintendo's dip into smartphone apps has been disappointing. At the beginning they were doing some interesting stuff, like Miitomo which was a simple social-media-like app where you and your friends basically just answered questions if I recall, I had fun with that for a few months. They released Super Mario Run which wasn't really my thing but it was at least a one-time purchase that got you all the content.

But apparently not even Nintendo can overcome the enshittification of mobile app stores, and we have Mario Kart Tour which is just pay-to-win garbage that uses every dirty trick in the book to get your money. They infamously make you do races with fake online players that look like they've been spending money to make you see what you're "missing out on".

Even worse, Tour has infected Nintendo's actually good Mario Kart offering on Switch, with recent DLC packs including courses from Tour which are the most bland, uninspired, and boring courses in the game cause it's always just generic city streets with some Toads standing around in the audience. Obviously they do it because they already have moderately high-quality models of the maps that they can just drag into the game from Tour, as opposed to recreating something from e.g. Mario Kart 64 or Super Mario Kart (SNES) to bring it up to modern standards. Or making something new entirely.