Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@FishyS Wonder DLC would be cool, I do hope Nintendo pulls some unexpected stuff outta the bag.

@Bolt_Strike Definitely agree — they have lots of games they could port (and I personally desperately want quite a few of them) but if they don't consider them potentially profitable enough, they won't bother.

I would loooove Splatoon spinoffs. I'm still sad the current rogue-like DLC wasn't a proper spinoff. I agree more Mario universe sub-franchises would definitely be fun as well. I'm hoping Peach becomes a real continuing series. Rosalina was basically alluded to in the Mario movie, so I'm hoping she appears in another movie and then gets a game. More Captain Toad or Bowser would be good too.

@Bolt_Strike I have always wanted a Mario kart game that you could get out of the car lol, idk what the point would be but I think that would be cool.

@GalaxicGlobe I want one with more jumping and platforming. Crazy levels please

@GalaxicGlobe I don't think you would be able to, it wouldn't be Mario Kart if you weren't driving a vehicle. I'm thinking more like Forza Horizons or DKR, something that you can just drive around an open world instead of being restricted to a linear track and could race through open terrain. That would be unique enough from both core Mario Kart gameplay and other open world games to justify making into its own game.

Soooo... Mario Maker 3?

@Bolt_Strike
A few points regarding the three year cycle for Mario Kart being broken. Firstly if the GBA, DS, 3DS games count then Tour definitely counts. Hideki Konno has been the producer for all the Mario Kart games, since 8 he has been pretty much entirely on mobile games. Along with a division of EPD generally. Like it or not, this is where some of that "Mario Kart 9 time" has been spent. Same deal with the track DLC

Secondly it's worth noting that after Mario Kart 8 this same studio released an experimental new IP called Splatoon. Which has since received regular releases in its own right. Now at the management level the resources don't quite like up, Splatoon is mostly made by Animal Crossing people, but I can't see how it wouldn't have been swallowing some of the resources that would have been used on Kart

Now.... I've been pretty vocal about not really wanting a Mario Kart 9. New Mario Kart for me has always been about two things, new tracks and having a Mario Kart to play on the console. If backwards compatibility is a thing then Mario Kart 8 is good enough. Put out a free update so it can run with HDR and a higher resolution/framerate and I'll be happy. Spend those resources on making something new, take a risk with another experiment

But I think despite my lack of interest there will almost surely be a Mario Kart 9. Frankly I'm not sure what the hook would be. I'm not sure an Open World game would still be Mario Kart.

If they were to do one personally I'd rather they just go the Smash Bros route. Update the engine maybe but make the hook simply that ALL of the tracks are there. That would get my attention

@skywake ARMS was the Mario Kart side of the studio, not Splatoon.

I think the next Mario Kart is basically done and was never needed due to MK8D. I think they probably have used this time to polish it up for the next console, and that it will be a launch window title.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 2.

Thing is that Tour and the DLC was mainly old content likely just touched up to be released on the new platform. That's like what, 2 or 3 years' worth of work? The BCP especially is just recycled Tour content so that probably took them next to no time to develop. That alone should not account for the long gap.

More likely they started thinking about the next proper (i.e. completely new console entry) after 8D and intended to release it mid-gen on the Switch but held off when they saw how well 8D was selling and they've been sitting on the next entry until the start of the generation. There's not a snowball's chance in hell that Tour and the BCP occupied that entire 6 year gap (and no, not Home Circuit either before you mention that, that was probably far more of Velan than the MK team), what we've seen from that team is far too unsubstantial to justify that length of time.

As Grumblevolcano said, Splatoon was made by the Animal Crossing and the Mario Kart Team released ARMS, which was also in 2017. They've really given us next to nothing in 6 years, which is suspicious.

You can only get away with recycling content and keeping things samey for so long before people get bored. 2D Mario is a good example of that, people were getting sick of the NSMB games just feeling like the same game but with new levels and Wonder was a breath of fresh air for the series. Mario Kart feels like it's at the same point with them basically coasting on the same style and mechanics for 10 years, it feels time for them to experiment with new mechanics and bold changes.

This is why an open world Mario Kart should be a subseries and not the hook for the new entry, with a subseries it's basically a bonus side series. If it succeeds great, you can run it simultaneously with the mainline entries, similar to how we have both 2D linear platformers and 3D sandbox platformers for main series Mario, or how we have both 2D Metroids and Metroid Prime.

Now really I'm not sure what else they could do either. Based on past gimmicks it'll probably be some sort of new style of vehicle/navigation to improve mobility. Maybe they could add grinding as a mechanic somehow? Maybe experiment with full flight instead of gliding? Something along those lines probably.

I also think some of the things Tour did would greatly improve an actual console Mario Kart instead of being stuck on a (likely one-off) mobile gacha game. Giving each track variants such as R, T, and R/T variant, having an actual shop system instead of unlocking random characters, karts, and parts at certain coin intervals (whoever came up with the coin interval thing in the first place deserves to be fired), bringing back Mission Mode and special items, having ranked online content to compete on (possibly with Tour's point system which tracked a score in each course based on chaining actions together as quickly as possible). Stuff like this would greatly improve Mario Kart to a much greater degree than just "LOL more/better looking tracks".

We just had many of them through the BCP already, that's pretty close to the Ultimate route anyway. How would having them all over again be interesting and engaging? The Ultimate route seems like a good way to get players sick of Mario Kart and creating similar fatigue to what the NSMB games caused.

@Grumblevolcano
Officially yes, but we're talking resources not labels. If you look even at just the high level credits you'll see some of these people going on from Mario Kart to Arms for sure.... but also Mario Kart Live, Mario Kart Tour, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Splatoon 2, Splatoon 3, Mario Maker 2, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and the Booster course

Of course if you look at the last couple of years? It does appear to dry up a bit. And you can even look at some some of these guys and they just seem to disappear entirely after Arms outside of minor credits on Smash Ultimate, at least on their IMDB pages. So some of these guys are on on something we don't know about, haven't been credited for stuff or have left Nintendo. But..... we also don't know much about what Nintendo is releasing at all for the next couple of years so not knowing what these guys are working on isn't entirely unexpected

For sure, they could well be working on a Mario Kart 9 and given that Mario Kart is basically a licence to print money they almost surely are. But my point was more that it's not as simple as saying that "it's been 7 years since we had a retail Mario Kart so what have these guys been doing for 7 years". Because it's clear a lot of these guys were pulled into stuff like Splatoon, Animal Crossing, Tour, the DLC, Live, mobile games etc. And if technical leads, producers, directors, composers etc were on these things then you can be sure that more junior staff were moved around also. They haven't been on Mario Kart 9 for 7 years is my point, Splatoon is definitely one of the other things they've been on

And ok, I get it. We're never going to agree on this topic @Bolt_Strike so there's no point arguing. We've played this game before so I don't see much value in doing this dance again. Especially in regards to what Mario Kart should be and where they should go next. But I do think you're far too quick to dismiss the amount of effort that would've gone into Tour and the DLC. Just because it has been tainted with the "mobile game" brush doesn't mean it was low effort

If the next Direct reveals ARMS II I will die happy.

It's not JUST because it was a mobile game, it's because it's a mobile game with a lot of old content and not much new content. There's only been 14 new courses in Tour, and they were spread across 4 years of live service support, whereas console Mario Kart games get 16 completely new courses at launch (and 8 got 9 more added as DLC just a few months after release). They were mainly just recycling old content for BOTH games, it's not like they spent a lot of time on new courses and assets, that entire period was largely just an asset flip for a quick buck.

At risk of extending this discussion into an actual argument I do have one thought RE: what Mario Kart 9 could do. Mario Kart all the way up until the first Mario Kart 8 DLC was strictly Mario universe stuff. Then they dropped that DLC and it was a special thing to have F-Zero, Animal Crossing, Zelda tracks/characters. But even with that fundamentally Mario Kart 8 is still predominantly tied to Mario

What if the gimmick of Mario Kart 9 is that it isn't Mario Kart 9 at all. What if this time they actually go all in on making a proper full roster, diverse IP Kart racer. Smash tier crossovers, third party collaboration tier crossovers. As in you go from a Mario themed track to one from Metroid then Pokemon and Zelda. Bayonetta to Sonic to Minecraft. Would allow for a massive boost in course variety and would also allow them to expand well beyond the restrictions of a "Mario Kart" game

@Bolt_Strike
14 tracks over 4 years, basically a full game's worth of tracks since 2019 for Tour. Plus the work involved in porting those tracks for the Booster Course and also reworking some classic tracks for both. I'm not sure what your argument is here, you've basically proven my point

@skywake The path I thought was the case was: MK8 + DLC (2014 - 2015) -> MK8 Deluxe + ARMS (2017) -> MK Tour (2019 - 2023) + Booster Course Pass DLC (2022 - 2023) -> Whatever the next project is

Given a new Smash game would be a downgrade on Ultimate due to lots of cuts (like roster and stages) as a result of licensing, I feel the best outcome would be: ARMS being the franchise to get a brand new game meanwhile Smash gets more DLC for Ultimate and Mario Kart either gets more DLC for MK8 Deluxe or a "Everyone and everywhere is here" compilation title.

I could imagine an ARMS II for Switch II... do you think it would be a console exclusive or cross-generation? 🤔 I don't have a good sense of how resource-intensive arms is and of course we aren't sure Switch 2 won't have some new motion-related gimmick/tweak. I could sort of imagine ARMS as a game announced now but we later find out there is some extra special feature in the Switch 2 version.

@Grumblevolcano
Yeah, that's probably a fair timeline I think. I think we almost surely see Mario Kart again soon in some form but what form that takes who knows. Could be another compilation of stuff plus some tracks or even effectively more tracks for 8 even if it's not marketed like that. Few ways that could go down. Maybe they reboot the franchise and do something totally unexpected with it. Maybe it's entirely predictable and the unexpected thing is some new IP entirely

Who knows

But all I know is what I want is just.... more tracks.... more variety of tracks... higher fidelity tracks....

@FishyS
I'd think Arms as a title would be pretty light in terms of resources required. There's a reason why those kind of 3D fighters in the early 00's were so common and some of the biggest graphical showpieces. Same deal with rail shooters. When you have a relatively small space like that with a very locked down camera you can control what needs to be loaded and rendered out very predictably

More tracks are nice but I'd love a real story mode where things happen and then you have to do a 1 on 1 race against Donkey Kong or whatever to get him to join you. Maybe save the the world (or the Toad who was in charge of the international racing consortium and got kidnapped) along the way with lots of varied races inbetween plot segments.

Having lots of crazy characters like Skywake suggested would also be very fun.

@skywake EA collab for Mario Kart Underground. Ubi collab for The Klub. Endless possibilities

Acclaim comes back for a collab... Extreme-K.

Think about it