Monolith Soft has been one of the core studios that Nintendo has made use of in order to develop some of its open-world titles. The studio behind games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has gotten something of a reputation when it comes to being able to make expansive open worlds for systems with limited hardware. In a new social media post, the studio has revealed that it once again had a hand in the open-world kart racer Mario Kart World.
The social media post by the studio is fairly sparse, simply announcing that Mario Kart World is out now. The post does, however, also mention that Monolith Soft was contracted by Nintendo to work on the kart racer’s open world and even some of its character designs. “Mario Kart World, for which Monolith Soft was contract to develop the fields and character designs, was released by Nintendo Co., Ltd,” wrote the studio (translation via X).
While Monolith Soft is known for its own line-up of open-world RPGs – the Xenoworld Chronicles games – the studio has previously also worked as a support studio to help Nintendo develop games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which was praised at the time for its open-world design and overall gameplay. More recently, along with released Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Monolith Soft has also helped other Nintendo studios work on games in the Pikmin, Animal Crossing, and Splatoon franchises.
After having worked with Nintendo for quite some time, back in December, Monolith Soft was officially acquired. While 4 percent of the company’s shares had previously remained with co-founders Hirohide Sugiura, Tetsuya Takahashi and Yasuyuki Honne, with Nintendo holding the rest of the shares, Nintendo has since officially acquired 100 percent of the studio’s shares.
While the open world of Mario Kart World might deserve praise, producer Kosuke Yabuki has recently revealed that the game’s developers don’t really like using the term “open-world game”. According to Yabuki, this comes down to the fact that the term is quite loosely defined.
“We, on the development team side, we don’t call this world an open world,” said Yabuki. “Because in our view we don’t feel that the term open world is clear in terms of its definition.” Yabuki also mentioned that Mario Kart World has a bigger world for players to explore. “We do have this expansive world, and we’ve placed therein the Mario Kart Circuit or the Bowser Castle, or the Choco Mountain, and tried to build a new Mario Kart,” he said.
When it comes to the sheer scope of the game’s world and the number of tracks that players can race through, Yabuki spoke about how the interconnected nature of the game’s roads meant that the developers had to pay special attention to overall game balance.
“In this installation of Mario Kart, all of the roads are interconnected so if you were to tweak a certain route to make it easier to run through, it would impact all the other roads and routes,” explained Yabuki. “So we were aware that they’re all interconnected and we would need to be mindful of the overall balance.”
Mario Kart World is out now as one of the launch titles for the Nintendo Switch 2.
