Nintendo on how Mario Kart World came to be, development started in 2017

Nintendo has spoken about the origins of Mario Kart World, revealing that the project started developing in 2017.

According to producer Kosuke Yabuki, the team first began prototyping in March 2017 following the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch. Production then moved forward officially by the end of that year.

Kabuki said the goal was to “to involve players driving around a large world”. This eventually led to the idea of an interconnected world that could be explored freely.

Yabuki said the following in a new interview that went live today:

“We were thinking about what to do for the next Mario Kart game even during the development of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and we began prototyping in March 2017. It was at the end of that year when we officially started work on it as a project. I felt that in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, we were able to perfect the formula that we’d been following in the series up to that point, where players race on individual courses. That’s why, this time, we wanted the gameplay to involve players driving around a large world, and we began creating a world map like this.”

Mario Kart World hits Nintendo Switch 2 on June 5, 2025. It was recently explained why the game was chosen as Nintendo’s launch title for the system – read about that here.