Mario Kart World’ entered development in 2017 and could have launched on the original Nintendo Switch before the studio realised the game would be too much of a technical challenge for the console, developer Kosuke Yabuki has revealed.
‘Mario Kart World’ started development in 2017 and could have launched on the original Nintendo Switch.
The upcoming racing game will be releasing exclusively on the Nintendo Switch 2 alongside the console’s launch next month (05.06.25), and producer Kosuke Yabuki has now revealed ‘Mario Kart World’ was initially being planned as a title for the first Switch eight years ago.
Speaking in Nintendo’s ‘Ask the Developer Vol. 18: Mario Kart World – Part 1’, Yabuki said: “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.”
However, after the team realised the scope and scale of ‘Mario Kart World’ would be too much for the first Switch, Nintendo shifted the title to the Switch 2 so the studio didn’t have to sacrifice any aspect of their vision.
Yabuki explained: “We worked on it while kicking the can down the road in terms of deciding what to give up on, so at some point, we knew it was going to get messy.
“But as we’d decided to release ‘Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Booster Course Pass’, we thought that would give us a bit more time to continue development.
“That’s when the conversation of moving it to the Nintendo Switch 2 system came up, and this suddenly opened up a bunch of possibilities on what we could do. It was truly a ray of hope.”
Mario Kart World entered development in 2017 and could have released on original Nintendo Switch
