Admittedly pricing kinda sucks but considering DK is at 70USD. I legitimately think they cooked a LOT on this title to make it look like the DEFINITIVE Mario Kart experience.
Fantastic first showcase and day one of course.

I agree with Rol on the course design in this open world structure, how it'll affect the flow of the racing and also the fact you'll seemingly have to run to the different courses in between races ...

But after MK Tour, costumes for the racers was a must and I'm glad we've got it.

I'm also glad that haven't listened to the fringe opposition that wanted the game to become another Smash Bros kind of deal

It's nothing to worry about, the trailer shows that the race is drawn out like a regular Mario Kart type design, but beyond that it's possible to also explore so one doesn't compromsie the other.

Didn't have a chance to post my thoughts last night as the Direct ended at 1am here and I had to steal as much sleep as I could before work first thing in the morning, but as someone who bought Mario Kart 8 on Wii U in May 2014, it's hard to overstate just how good it feels to have a proper new entry.

It look gorgeous, evolving the look of the series in a way that doesn't compromise its identity, the more open tracks and free roam is a cool way to differentiate it from prior games, and having 24 cars on the track at once should result in some brilliant mayhem.

It's been a long 11 years, I will be there day 1.

Five hundred dollars for a Nintendo handheld with a pack-in? Five hundred? I think my comparison works... too well lol.

Being a hybrid ("handheld") increases its value for many of us. It doesn't decrease it. $450 places it competitively with other handhelds of its power-level. It's roughly on par with a Asus Rog Ally Z1e in terms of compute hardware and display technology for example, and those retail for $469 (down from $700) without a dock or any of the other accessories. 

Nintendo could've created a $350 system, but there would have been compromises and people would've complained that it was too weak to get third party support, the screen was trash, build quality was trash, and/or it didn't have enough storage. 

In 2006 the base (20GB) PS3 was about 1.4% an average American's salary.

In 2025, a Switch 2 is about 0.67% of an average American's salary which is roughly the same ratio as the Wii's 0.64% in 2006. The Switch 2 is much closer to its competitors, on a hardware level, than the Wii was to the PS3 and 360. 

Over 50 characters already confirmed.

By that logic Switch was a Nintendo handheld without a pack-in for three hundred at a time when no Nintendo handheld had succeeded at above two hundred. Another PS3 situation.

Except it absolutely wasn't.

As they introduced it at first I was worried too about it being open, but by the end of MK video, seeing all the content and modes and gameplay, and that there are still standard courses it's not just a free form world (I'm assuming you can also choose to just race individual courses when you don't want to do an open multi-course race) I think it just adds a lot of content. Plus just everything about the game looks incredible. Usually I'm just like 'yep another Mario Kart game', but this game actually blew me away. Too bad it was the only mindblowingly awesome game they showed off for next gen.

Hopefully yeah they also include a bunch of old courses as they've done for a while now. I mean at $80 they better be including a ton of old courses along with this huge open racing world. With these insane game prices I expect paid DLC to be a thing of the past so that even if old courses aren't there for launch and come later on it should be free (or at minimum all DLC comes with the NSO expansion pack, but really it should just come free for all games considering the prices).

If Nintendo hadn't totally screwed up the pricing of everything I think this game alone would be enough to make me be looking for the system in stores once it's out, even if I'd likely be waiting months until the second game I would buy would come out.

I was hoping they'd include more non-Mario content cuz that would be incredible and is the next logical step for the series after World, because as good as MK8D is it feels like the same basic thing I've been playing for decades, but I gotta say the World concept hits it out of the park and totally satisfies me. I can wait another gen until they expand MK into a larger field of Nintendo characters/courses/items. World kinda came out of left field as the less obvious of the two huge things they could do to expand and reinvigorate the series, but I'm totally happy about it.

When watching the trailer, I got the feeling that parts of older courses will be made part of the new courses.

I am not so sure about that... Yeah, the open courses are cool, but you need to add stuff to do on that map or else it will feel empty and will get boring easily