>>713271341
They're not a new thing, they just kind of took a break for a while. Everyone and their grandmother had their own kart racer back in the day.

The current resurgence might be due to the fact that they're an easy genre to highlight character roster, and we're in the age of crossovers and collabs. Hence Miku and Spongebob in Sonic. It started with the MCU breaking down everyone's expectations about things not crossing over in big-budget "official" titles. Then you've got Fortnite normalizing bringing every IP ever into the game. Now EVERYONE wants to make their own "universe", and collaborate with as many outside IP's as possible because some people made a bajillion dollars by doing so.

My source for that being the reason is I pulled it out of my ass, but I feel like I'm not too far off.