Nintendo has allegedly made an interesting physical release, that could hint at something they could do in the future.
As reported by Nintendo Life, some gamers have seen a special copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe + Booster Course in the cartridge. And what we mean is, they bought the game and found out that the Booster Course isn’t a download code, but is actually inside the cart.
The Booster Course Pass costs $24.99 on the Nintendo eShop. But if you are a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscriber, you can download the Booster Course at no extra cost. And some gamers who get to play Switch Online through the Family Plan, like younger players, may get to play the game and DLC without buying it.
So this is an interesting additional option to play the game. This was also set up for Southeast Asia, so there may be some extraneous circumstances behind this. Did Nintendo decide to make this cart because one or a few of those countries cannot access the eShop, even the US eShop? Or is there an issue with internet access in those places which have this cart?
We would certainly like to hope that Nintendo is testing this out for future potential releases. Now, we know that many games, particularly from third parties, are too big to fit in the capacities of Nintendo’s proprietary card. Nintendo’s formats used to be a big issue that drove these third parties away, but this was not the case for the Switch, because Nintendo was able to successfully set up a functional eShop.
But Nintendo themselves make their games in such a way, that the games will fit on cartridge. For a while, we could also rely on them to put the full game on cartridge too, but as we know, that did change in the latest console generations. Titles like Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart 8 already had DLC on the Wii U, and that was DLC that’s completely different from the amiibo.
So we didn’t really expect that Nintendo would make a cart version of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch that had the Booster Course in it. Even if the industry seems to be moving more towards digital than physical, perhaps there is a market for this sort of thing? Even if they turn out to be limited releases, and even if the price goes up, we imagine there will be gamers who would still buy physical copies of games with all the DLC and expansions added to them.
