Nintendo says Mario Kart World isn't called Mario Kart 9 because simply adding more courses wasn't the plan "this time" – "We wanted to take the series to the next level"

Nintendo has revealed that Mario Kart World isn't simply called Mario Kart 9 because the plan was to do more than add a couple of courses into the mix.

Before we knew what the next Mario Kart would be properly called, plenty settled on MK9 for ease more than anything, though it did kick off a debate over whether that's what it should be called – does the existence of Mario Kart Tour mean we should have gone to 10?

It ultimately mattered little as Nintendo went with Mario Kart World anyway, but if you really want to know the answer, producer Kosuke Yabuki confirms Mario Kart 9 would have been right, and the final distinction comes down to ambition.

In Nintendo's latest round of 'Ask the Developer' interviews, Yakubi was asked if it was always the plan to call it Mario Kart World rather than MK9.

"If the idea had just been to add more courses, then I think we would’ve called it Mario Kart 9," he replies. "But, that wasn't our approach this time. We wanted to take the series to the next level.

"So, we decided to drop the numbering this time and go with a completely new title, Mario Kart World. So, we'd already added 'Mario Kart World' to the concept art from the early stages of development."

Funnily enough, the exact same thing happened with Monster Hunter World, and Capcom has expressed similar sentiments about scope.

The developers also reveal that making Mario Kart World was a rather lengthy endeavor. Mario Kart World started development as an OG Switch game in 2017, but Nintendo ultimately went open-world because developers believe MK 8 Deluxe perfected "the formula that we'd been following" for 25 years.

Mario Kart World devs who "aren't that good at Mario Kart" are "favorites" in the Nintendo office because they can be the best playtesters: "Oh, so you don't get that. Interesting!"