Long-time Nintendo employee, Bill Trinen, the Vice President of Player & Product Experience, spoke with IGN about many things to do with the Switch 2 Direct last week. While there are plenty of things to look into in that discussion, we wanted to focus on how Trinen defended and explained the reasoning behind Mario Kart World being $80. While no one is ecstatic about the pricing for the upcoming game, he says there are quite a few secrets left in store for us.
Why is Mario Kart World $80?
According to Trinen, Mario Kart World being $80 at launch is less about the strategy of making sure the game is bringing in enough money to Nintendo and more about the value that the company sees in the game. While he says we have to wait until the Nintendo Direct focused on the game on April 17, he implies that the size and amount of secrets in the game justify the extra $10 over a game like Donkey Kong Bananza.
“But honestly, this is a game that is so big and so vast and you will find so many little things in it to discover. And there’s still some other secrets remaining that I think as people end up buying and playing the game, they’re going to find this to be probably the richest Mario Kart experience they’ve ever had.” – Bill Trinen
Of course, someone associated with Nintendo isn’t going to come out and say that they think the company is charging too much for any of their products. Trinen even defends the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour set of tech demos being a separate download instead of pack-in software, a situation that absolutely no one seems to see the value for.
Mario Kart World does look to be a great game, but we can’t help but question Trinen’s defense of secrets and content driving the price up in the game. It’s totally fine to acknowledge that inflation has raised prices across the board in the gaming industry, and that looks to only go further with talks of tariffs. We could see that argument for the game being $70, which is becoming more of the standard pricing for games, but completely jumping that to $80 at this stage seems a step too far.
