Inverse has published an interview with Nintendo’s senior vice president of product development Nate Bihldorff and asked him why the company opted to launch the system with the sure-fire hit Mario Kart World. Nate explained that Mario Kart is “one of the most broadly accessible games” therefore making it the perfect game to launch a brand new system with. The fact that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe still remains the best-selling Nintendo Switch game of all-time by a fair margin probably went some way in influencing the decision too.
Why choose to launch the Switch 2 with Mario Kart World, as opposed to another game?
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 levelonline, 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.
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