Nintendo explains why it chose Mario Kart World as its Switch 2 launch game

When Nintendo Switch 2 launches in just a few weeks, Mario Kart World will be there right alongside it. Nintendo has now spoken about the decision to tie the two together.

In a recent interview, Nintendo’s senior vice president of product development Nate Bihldorff spoke about how Mario Kart World is “one of the most broadly accessible games possible.” Also, anyone can easily get into the game, but it also has a high skill ceiling – meaning it’s very appealing to both hardcore and casual players.

Bihldorff shared the following in an interview with Inverse: 

“Mario Kart World is, in my mind anyways, one of the most broadly accessible games possible. The skill ceiling is incredibly high for people who are really into it. You saw this with Mario Kart Deluxe as well. But if you really want to play it at a high level, at the highest speed, the highest competitive level online, you’re going to spend a lot of time with this game, finding the best routes, finding the best techniques, all that.

But at the same time, this is a game that, like Mario Kart Deluxe, has as many settings as you’d like to basically make it so that a kid, really any age, or a person of any skill level can also do it, so stuff like auto accelerates, stuff like smart steering, which basically guides you back onto track, which we actually have been able to have. Those are the sorts of things that you can basically turn them all on. If you have a five year old kid, give them the controller played on 50cc, they may beat you. You also have the some slight nudges to the formula of Mario Kart that, such as, when you get an item now it automatically hangs behind you instead of actually a whole button.

That’s just another thing that makes it a little bit more accessible. So to my mind, not only does Mario Kart 8 clearly demonstrate that there’s a lot of appetite for racing games, broadly speaking, because it sold very well over the course the entire Switch generation, but really, it comes back to that idea that this is a game that really is going to satisfy any kind of Nintendo gamer. Even somebody who isn’t a Nintendo gamer yet might be later. For that reason, it really matches perfectly with the system.”

Mario Kart World will be the first entry in the series to launch alongside a new console. However, a few different titles have come close. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, for instance, arrived just a couple of months after Nintendo Switch debuted.

In other Mario Kart World news, Nintendo recently confirmed that the game doesn’t use any AI-generated images.