Nintendo fans have reacted in despair at the lack of updates to Mario Kart World, following this week’s big Nintendo Direct broadcast.
While DLC and expansions were confirmed for other hit Switch 2 games, such as Donkey Kong Bananza and Pokémon Pokopia, Nintendo once again kept schtum about any plans to add content to the platform’s best-selling title.
Of course, many fans bought Mario Kart World in a bundle with their console — but owners say that this is the perfect reason why Nintendo should be prioritizing the game with fresh content. After all, it has the biggest install base of any title on Switch 2 — and for many, it could do with sprucing up, to counter claims that its open world is a bit dull.
“Nintendo took our Switch 2 bundle and $80 and went home,” wrote Yoshimitsu126, in a ResetEra forum thread discussing the lack of Mario Kart World updates. “And now are wondering wtf to do with the open world if they add new tracks. While DK and Pokopia have DLC announced with a few months after they got released.”
“I do think Nintendo at this point are getting a bit complacent and cocky,” wrote RowGonsoleConsole in a similar lengthy thread on reddit, titled ‘No DLC Announcement For MKW Nintendo Hates Us And Mario Kart.’ “World 100% needed DLC more than Bananza did but yet I feel like I’ve seen new news about Bananza every five seconds.”
“It’s crazy to me that Donkey Kong Bananza (a single-player game that carried no expectations of ongoing support) has had more regular content drops than MKW,” added Axe. “You’d think they’d want to leverage this open world as much as possible by regularly adding new challenges, vehicles, and whatever… but I guess not. I don’t even particularly care about having a big DLC with new tracks. Just having a new costume option for DK or Pauline would be nice, at the very least.”
While some fans have questioned how Nintendo will add new tracks to its existing Mario Kart World map, others have suggested that all the company need do is add in additional racers, costumes or challenges to keep the game feeling fresh. With it owned by so many Switch 2 purchasers, surely this would be the perfect solution to keep fans coming back to the console?
“Classic Grand Prix as an option, multiplayer free roam, user-created point A to point B races in the world,” suggested gary!. “Being really bold – add in a Diddy Kong Racing-like basic story that progresses you through the world and add simple boss events/races which would also carry over to multiplayer modes. All of that seems like it could be added to the existing map. Then in another year go ahead and add another map. Go nuts.”
“MK World needs split screen online progression,” wrote OuterWildsVentures. “We still don’t play it because Player 2 gets nothing lol”
Alas, Nintendo has made no mention of major additions to Mario Kart World — paid, or otherwise — beyond the addition of a third battle mode, Bob-omb Blast. Otherwise, all it has done to the game so far is tweak settings and improve a couple of sparse stretches of open world — though fans would like to see much more done. Surely new content will eventually come in time — and it is still early days for Switch 2, with the console now just a year old. Maybe next year?
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
