Mario Kart World Direct: how to watch and what to expect

Tomorrow is the Mario Kart World Direct. Nintendo shared today that the presentation will last for fifteen minutes, which makes sense for a showcase featured on a game that was already shown relatively in depth a few weeks ago. However, there is one thing that will surely be on many viewers’ minds. If you watched the Nintendo Treehouse lives in the days following the Switch 2 Direct, you likely saw the numerous consistent messages asking Nintendo to “drop the price.” Thankfully, Nintendo makes it easy to tune in to see what happens.

Mario Kart World Direct has a lot of questions to answer tomorrow

Mario Kart World was the opening announcement of Nintendo’s Switch 2 Direct presentation. Why wouldn’t it be? The previous iteration, Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have solidified the game as one of the best-selling games of all time, if anything will push people to buy new hardware it’s a brand-new Mario Kart after eleven years. But one important detail was missing from the entire Direct. How much would this, along with other games and the console itself, cost fans? Unfortunately, Nintendo quietly posted on their website that Mario Kart World would set a new standard for triple A video game prices at $80. A big question for tomorrow’s Direct is how, and if, Nintendo will address these concerns.

As the first new game in the series since before the original Nintendo Switch, expectations were high. Nintendo seems to have delivered, at least from a gameplay perspective. Mario Kart World has a seamless world to explore between tracks, a hype new knockout mode, twenty-four players in each race, and one of the wildest rosters of characters we’ve ever seen.

To watch tomorrow’s Direct, go to Nintendo’s YouTube channel. The stream page is already up, but live chat won’t become available until shortly before the presentation. It is scheduled to go live at 6:00am Pacific Time, the same time as the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct. Nintendo shared a post to social media with all this information, as well as a link to the stream page.

As someone who’s been a Nintendo fan for a long time, I would be surprised if Nintendo mentioned anything about the $80 price backlash. They do not typically have back and forth with fans in that way. This also comes during a time when pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch 2 console are still unavailable in the US and Canada, after a delay due to tariffs. With the 90-day delay, some have speculated that it could change things, but that is optimistic. There is a chance we will learn something about the future of pre-orders in those countries tomorrow, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Mario Kart World

June 5, 2025

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