The company wants to increase sales of the home console

Apr 28, 2014 11:28 GMT  ·  By

Mario Kart 8 is the biggest Wii U based launch of the coming months and the team at Nintendo in charge of the new racing title says that it has plans for a solid and long-term promotional campaign for the title that will run all through the year.

At the moment, the company is running a social media-based campaign that’s designed to highlight the quality of previous titles in the series and make fans nostalgic about the best moments they spend with the franchise.

As the May 30 launch date of Mario Kart 8 draws closer, the Nintendo will step up its promotional activity both online and on television.

It will then continue to remind players about the game until the end of the year.

MCV quotes Roger Langford, a brand manager working at the United Kingdom division of Nintendo, as saying that, “To herald the launch of the most hotly anticipated Wii U title to date we will have marketing activity pre-launch as well as post-launch moving through the summer and into peak season.”

He adds, “For the first time in HD, Mario Kart 8 introduces original course designs that highlight the game’s new anti-gravity feature, which allows players to race upside down or up vertical surfaces. This adds a whole new dimension to the racing.”

Mario Kart 8 is very important to the Wii U because it is widely seen as one of the titles that has enough recognition among fans in order to power a revival in sales for the home console, which has been severely underperforming.

The device was supposed to move nine million units to players for the fiscal year that ended on March 31, but it only managed to deliver under 3 million.

Nintendo has said that at the moment it has no plans to abandon the Wii U and that the big coming game launches will make the console attractive to players once more.

It’s unclear whether Mario Kart 8 can offer enough of a boost to allow it to compete with the Xbox One from Microsoft and the PlayStation 4 from Sony.

At the same time, Nintendo is also looking to the launch of Super Smash Bros. later in 2014, which will be offered on both the Wii U and the 3DS.

The fighting game has a large fan base, but at the moment, the title does not have an associated launch date.