So Yoshi's restaurant is essentially a form of free loot box system? Just unlock a new skin each time you go through? I remember seeing the original teaser and thinking it was going to be a form of mechanic shop, which would've been a cool mechanic (pun)

There's a small handful of useful new information, but I feel like the way only Nintendo is going to truly sell everyone on the $80 pricetag is if any and all DLC is free. Not necessarily Booster Course Pass level of DLC, but that would be great if it was that much free content!

If anything it's only worth $60 USD and $80 CAD. It's not often I dislike a Direct on YouTube.

Yeah the Direct was very underwhelming, but there's always this debate about how much a game costs compared to the amount of content it provides.

I paid $60 for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in 2017 and have routinely replayed it over the past 8 years putting in about 400 hours altogether. Booster Course Pass also had something to do with it which was another $25.

Compare that to me buying Luigi's Mansion 3 also for $60. I finished it in about 20 hours, enjoyed it, and haven't touched it again in 5 years.

Ultimately, Mario Kart is a franchise that's designed for you to constantly come back to for years and years. So from Nintendo's perspective, they see the hundreds of hours many people spend on each game as a sign that it's worth the additional money compared to other games they offer because you get so much play time with it. I mean, I've already previously spent $80 on a Mario Kart game lol. Will I get World at launch? I'm not so sure now, but if Nintendo comes out and says all DLC will be free, then I'll be on board for sure because I know I'm going to be playing this game for years to come. But that's just me.

True. And the new characters are underwhelming, further contradicting the price hike. We don't get Dixie Kong or King K Rool but we get Conkador and a cow?

Yeah that's something else that's underwhelming for me. Sure it's funny random ass characters, but at the very least include all characters from previous games as a starting point.  

From what I can see, not even other crossover characters like Link or Isabelle are in World. 

Here's to hoping they either just haven't shown them off yet or will be part of free DLC.

Really meh direct

Definitely not buying MK9, barely have 30h logged in MK8 anyway

Yeah it's annoying. Don't know why they can't just make it so you select your character then an outfit instead of you having to go through 70+ characters because there's 6 different Mario's lmao.

Did the Switch 1's success make Nintendo stupid?

History has pointed to Nintendo making stupid decisions when being successful lol. Earliest I can think of was sticking with cartridges for the N64 when the rest of the industry was moving to CD, and the N64 paid the price for it. Even the Sega Saturn had more than double the amount of games the N64 had, and Nintendo even lost a massive amount of third party support they enjoyed on the SNES.

I'm sure there's another example before the N64, but even the success of the Wii made Nintendo choke going to the Wii U as another example.

Probably just a marketing trick to make it seem like theres more characters.