There was a time in video game history when it didn’t take many people to make a video game. Seriously, there were periods when titles of decent sizes were only crafted by a few people. Typically, one on art, one on programming, and maybe one on doing the other elements. Today, that’s still possible, but not when you’re making titles the size and scale of Mario Kart World. After all, the game had not only massive levels but an open-world mode, lots of characters with different costumes, and new, challenging racing modes that would test even the best of racers out there.
Yet, what you may not have realized was just how much the game needed developer-wise to get off the ground. In a post on Blue Sky, Insider Stealth noted that Mario Kart World had a dev team of over 300 people! Just as important, teams like Monolith Soft, Bandai Namco, and more pitched it to help make everything as smooth as it could be.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of Nintendo using a 300+ team to make one game, but it’s probably a little surprising that it happened here. However, when you really think about what this game had to offer, especially with its massive levels that you could explore in Free Roam mode and the desire to make this game look good and be as smooth as possible, you can see where the extra help might have been needed.
Plus, there were the “little touches” that helped the game pop a bit more, such as the dancing animations that the various characters had on the character select screen. All of this added up to an amazing experience that was the launch title for the Nintendo Switch 2, and Nintendo clearly cared about its quality enough to “bring in extra hands” to ensure its standing.
Ironically, this could also be one of the reasons why the game was $80. Certain groups were frustrated that Nintendo hiked up the price of the game to that amount despite how other titles, like an upcoming one with Donkey Kong, were only $70. While we can’t say it for certain, having that big of a dev team means that the cost of making the game was much higher. So, that increased price likely helped ensure that the game made a good profit as the Switch 2 units started rolling out.
We applaud everyone who helped make the game an incredible experience.
