 So Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is getting DLC, $25, 48 tracks, 12 cups, six different, you know, slices of releases all the way through 2023 with the first wave coming fairly soon. And this is actually really, really good news and was one of the big surprise announcements during that Nintendo Direct we just had, but the thing is something isn't quite right when it comes to this DLC. Something feels off and we got to talk about this and also why, hey, the next Mario Kart game obviously isn't going to be coming until next gen and that that actually might be Mario Kart 10 because we already have Mario Kart 9. Now before I talk about this further, I want to remind you that we are giving away a Switch OLED, a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X to one lucky winner. All you have to do is go down to the Gleam.io link down in the description or the pinned comment to enter. And yeah, it's basically winner's choice. It's to choose one of the current generation consoles. And no, I don't want to hear any more complaints that Switch isn't current generation. Guys, it's Nintendo's current generation system just like PlayStation 5 is for Sony and Xbox Series is for Microsoft. So can we just stop now? It's literally the most recent Nintendo platform. Alright, moving on. Let's talk about this for a moment. They announced this DLC in quite surprising fashion and some people made some notes I noticed during our live chat about it because we were live streaming this and live reacting and I kind of ignored the chatter because I wasn't really paying super close attention to the actual tracks and courses. I'm in the middle of a live stream. So I'm focused on just the shock of the moment combined with obviously trying to make sure things remain entertaining. So yeah, I obviously did not take a long look at this DLC. In fact, the thing I focused on probably the most after the Direct was over was the fact that it's being included with Nintendo Switch online. Now yes, you can still buy it separately for 25, but now it's part of the Nintendo Switch Online expansion pack as well, which does seem to open the door to the idea that Nintendo might be putting all of their future paid DLC on this service. If it turns out that Pokemon Legends Arceus has paid DLC and that gets added to the service, I think that's the final proof we need that Nintendo is planning to do this moving forward, making the expansion pass actually a credible if not incredible deal. That being said, we need to talk about Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's actual DLC because one thing that was notable in the tracks they showed off in the footage, which you're going to see a ton of and I'm repeat here, is that it doesn't quite look right. When you consider that Mario Kart 8 was obviously a Wii U game ported over to the Nintendo Switch and already had a paid DLC pack back then, the paid DLC pack back then added new tracks in as well like the Animal Crossing track and obviously Hyrule. And what's interesting about these tracks in these courses that were added the first time they did DLC for this is that they were just as high quality standard in terms of visuals as the original tracks. You could definitely tell it was the Mario Kart 8 team that made this content. This time around, I can already tell you where all these tracks are coming from. I can already tell you why visually it does not look even remotely close to as good as the rest of the tracks in Mario Kart 8 because yeah sure there are tracks from older games and we could try to make excuses but reality is Mario Kart 8 already has tracks from older games and they look utterly fantastic because they've been modernized. These tracks they've been modernized all right for Mario Kart Tour. What's very clear is that all of these tracks at least that we have seen to this point are coming directly out of Mario Kart Tour. Now Mario Kart Tour already gets a lot of tracks added all the time and yes they're not as visually pleasing as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe likely so Mario Kart Tour can run on a wide range of devices. Sure my iPhone 13 Pro here might be more powerful than a Nintendo Switch but that doesn't make the iPhone 8 which can also play Mario Kart Tour able to you know output the same visual fidelity as a Nintendo Switch so because of that and because Nintendo is trying to make sure Mario Kart Tour runs well on a wide variety of smartphone devices the visuals aren't as polished or as pretty or as visually pleasing as they are in Mario Kart 8 and for the most part that's fine Mario Kart Tour is still a good time but the issue of courses they are now just taking courses that they have created or remastered or redone for a mobile app and just slapping them in Mario Kart 8 and I can argue right now that that isn't being done by the actual team that made Mario Kart 8 now I do think the team behind Mario Kart 8 is actually working on the next you know full brand new Mario Kart game I'm I'm under no pretense that the next Mario Kart game isn't some in development somewhere either by a small team if not the full Mario Kart team but the thing is they obviously had whoever handled Tour or some other side team working on bringing these courses from Tour over and thinking hey this is okay we already gave you these courses basically for free on your phone let's charge you for them to add them to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and I don't have an issue with charging for them my issue is when you're not going to deliver the same fidelity that we're used to now you can argue it's 25 bucks for 48 courses that's still a ton of courses and maybe some of those courses do end up with higher visual qualities but that doesn't really seem to be the the the the thing here there's 48 courses on Mario Kart Tour I'm guessing we're getting all of them uh what's interesting of course is that Mario Kart Tour is and has been an extremely well supported app by Nintendo and well every game being with tracks you add to Mario Kart 8 is considered part of the core Mario Kart franchise that includes Mario Kart Tour tracks so the key nine to love you I probably already know where I'm going with this Mario Kart Tour is Mario Kart 9 in the same way that Mario Kart Double Dash you know could be considered a numbered version back then so this is why when we've seen rumors that have flitted out there about about Mario Kart X and Mario Kart Crossroads and all the things that surrounding the number numeral number 10 reality is the next Mario Kart game probably will be called Mario Kart 10 or X or Cross or some sort of form that's made that that's being a play on being the 10th Mario Kart game in the main line series now look Mario Kart 9 being a mobile game I don't think is an insult obviously with Nintendo focusing most of their development teams on a single platform if there was going to be another mobile only Mario Kart it made sense for it to be in an app on a phone and Mario Kart Tour again is a lot of fun and again I don't have a problem with bringing courses from Mario Kart Tour over the issue of course is why are we seeing lower fidelity I mean I know why because it's cheaper right it's cheap to do what they're doing and they get to now make extra money on top it's just shouldn't we expect better Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the number one selling Mario Kart of all time it's the number one selling switch game of all time and now it's been multiple generations so I can argue that even if you want to base you know take the courses originally off of Mario Kart Tour and use that as the start to bring courses over to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe then why don't we also I don't know maybe at least retexture them up res them correctly so things don't I mean even even just watching some of the textures in the game you could tell that it's just not properly up res from a smart device I'm I'm really disappointed here and maybe things will change by the time the wave one comes out and all of a sudden there'll be massive visual upgrades and all that to match the rest of Mario Kart 8 or there won't and I'm leaning towards the fact that there won't be because they know millions and millions of millions of people are going to buy this DLC or get the online expansion pass or who already have it and just play this stuff for free and I'm guilty of it as well I already know that I will be partaking in getting this DLC but part of it is because I need to explore deeper into this thought process that this doesn't look as good and I obviously when I play it on my TV on live stream with you guys am I going to end up caring that it doesn't look as good we've talked about how gameplay is king in the past and this has made me extremely forgiving of Pokemon Legends Arceus now we've talked in the past about how the visual fidelity of things like you know Pokemon Legends Arceus ended up bothering me less and less the more I play because the gameplay was that engaging that addicting and that amazing where it's like look I do expect better visuals from a Switch game and what we get with Pokemon Legends Arceus especially an exclusive game we've already seen Monster Hunter Rise and others look way better unfortunately that's not what happened here with Legends Arceus but I love the gameplay so much I kind of sort of forgot about the visuals and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe already has amazing gameplay and is arguably the best Mario Kart game ever made already even without this DLC so it's possible that while I'm playing the game I end up not caring that it doesn't look as good or maybe I will care because it could be extremely jarring when you're doing online tournaments and you're bouncing between the new courses and the old courses and you might notice these old courses look so much better than the new ones and usually newer content looks better than older um the number of Chronicles 2 DLC anybody so this is a very weird approach for Nintendo from a business perspective I get it it's a cheap way to add a bunch of courses make a whole bunch of money and call it a day and maybe it ends up being well enough that it doesn't matter but from the fan perspective this is the number one selling game on switch and we're getting the second paid DLC for this game the first of which came on Wii U and shouldn't we expect more I think that's the interesting conversation point is shouldn't we expect more so I actually want to ask you guys do you think it's acceptable what they've done clearly just porting over a bunch of mobile tracks or do you think they should have maybe even if they use that as a base bumped up the visual fidelity and actually had someone rework all the textures and I want to hear how hard this is we literally have solo fans recreating entire games in Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5 Nintendo's a multi-billion dollar company they clearly could have put a team on this to make this look better if they had wanted to they just didn't because they didn't think hey if we up the visual quality it's really gonna up our sales more than we would have got anyways so they didn't view it as a sound investment so from my business perspective they're probably right but I'm just curious do you find this to be acceptable also do you agree with my my claim basically that Mario Kart 2 or is actually Mario Kart 9 and if you do do you think they're going to call the next one Mario Kart 10 Mario Kart x crossroads or just use some other sort of name to describe it you know people talk about Mario Kart Ultimate as an example I know some people do think the next Mario Kart is going to be sort of a Smash Bros style game where it's going to bring a whole bunch of Nintendo IPs together because they've already done that in prior DLC with Mario Kart 8 bringing in obviously Animal Crossing and Zelda I do want to know though Splatoon as well by the way I do want to know that I don't think they would drop the Mario Kart branding I think Mario Kart as a brand is too big or I do think they could still make it a Smash Nintendo Kart sort of thing by keeping the Mario Kart branding it's just such an important brand it would be like oh if Animal Crossing is going to bring in a bunch of Nintendo characters like literal Nintendo characters then uh yeah oh my gosh we can't call it Animal Crossing anymore except you totally would because the IP name is too big so yeah I think things are going to end up being just fine um I'm not sure you know my stance on this is I expect better but they they know I'm buying it anyways so call me part of the problem if you would like I'm also a Nintendo YouTuber and I will say if I wasn't a Nintendo YouTuber this might be the thing that made me not get the DLC this is one of those because we do YouTube because we do live streams because people are going to want me to play it and I need to more closely examine it for the channel I'm gonna get it but if I was a standalone consumer I'm not so sure I get this DLC one I'm already perfectly happy with what Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is but also man I play these courses on Mario Kart 2 already do I really want to pay extra to have the exact same experience just on my TV now you guys let me know you think about this down in the comments below I understand your overall jams from Nintendo Prime I want to thank you so much for tuning in give me your full thoughts on this DLC and all the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe stuff I get not trying to poo poo on this by the way I'm actually really glad we're getting this DLC I'd rather have it than not even in the the the form it is at the moment it obviously was a complete surprise and nobody thought this was going to happen so I am actually really thrilled that we're getting this is actually one of the announcements I like the most out of that Nintendo Direct I mean obviously you know by Chronicles 3 is a really really big deal despite being rumored forever that's really really awesome Nintendo Switch sports Fire Emblem 3 oh Fire Emblem Warriors got in order to put the Warriors name in three hopes that I mean again so many great announcements from that Direct and this I think is one of those highlighted announcements and I probably end up really enjoying the tracks in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe I just I don't know am I being weird and saying if this wasn't like something I did on YouTube I wouldn't get it I'm always torn on that kind of thing right like trying to balance what I would do as a real consumer versus what I would do as a YouTuber because it's been blended for so long I think you guys can forgive me for struggling a little bit and trying to decide what really would I do if I wasn't on YouTube because it's hard to know at this point because I've been doing this for so long anyways thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video