Super Mario Odyssey having multiplayer was something that was already teased in the debut trailer for the Nintendo Switch last October, which implied that multiple players were playing the game at once. Super Mario Galaxy and Galaxy 2 had multiplayer support in a limited capacity, while 3D World went all in with that, and designed the entire game around multiplayer- so this was, again, to be expected.
But now, it looks like Nintendo is confirming this- or teasing this heavily, at any rate. When asked about multiplayer and online support, director Yoshiaki Koizumi stated: “The first thing I want to say about multiplayer is that since this is the Nintendo Switch, and it does have two controllers, it’s very easy for you to imagine handing one to another person. So there probably is some…thing you’ll hear about multiplayer. The timing is not quite there, so I hope you’re able to wait for a little longer to hear about that.”
“As for Network features,” Koizumi continued, “since this is something the hardware is capable of, there might be something that you’ll head about there as well, and we hope you’ll look forward to it.”
The big news here is online enabled multiplayer- previous Mario games have been local only. That is excellent news for all of us. Super Mario Odyssey will launch exclusively on the Nintendo Switch on October 27.