Mario Kart 9 is in “active development” and could be teased “this year,” according to Dr. Serkand Toto of Kantan Games.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is selling like absolute wildfire. It was the UK’s best-selling game on Black Friday and topped the final release charts of the year. It was one of the top ten selling games in Japan for 2021. As much as it sucks not to have a new Mario Kart game since 2014, it’s easy to understand why.
Yet, according to Dr. Toto, that may be finally changing.
He spoke with GamesIndustry.biz regarding predictions for the gaming industry in 2022. While Mario Kart 9 wasn’t his only prediction, it may have been his biggest:
“I am aware Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still selling very well on the Nintendo Switch, but Mario Kart 9 is in active development (and comes with a new twist), and Nintendo could tease it this year.”
What’s important here is the wording. Toto doesn’t seem to predict that Mario Kart 9 is in active development; he says it as fact, with the prediction being its reveal later this year. This would fall in line with rumors (please take this with a grain of salt) that the Mario Kart team, whose last release was ARMS in 2017, has been working on Mario Kart 9. Given how the linked information was dead-on concerning MercurySteam working on Metroid, there may be some smoke here, and you know what they say: where there’s smoke, there’s the long-awaited follow-up to Mario Kart 8, which came out eight years ago.
Mario Kart 8 is our favorite game in the series, so we’re excited to see what’s possible with Mario Kart 9. Once we finally get to sink our teeth into it, you better believe we’ll rank every track in the game.
