14 DAY TRIAL // Kosuke Yabuki, a producer at Nintendo, says that the team working on Mario kart 8 for the Wii U has pushed the home console to its limits in order to deliver solid gameplay, impressive graphics and a solid engine for replays.
The developer has previous experience working on titles ranging from The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Mario Kart 7 to Nintendogs + Cats.
He tells Edge that, “Our aim was to create a game that used HD graphics and played at a smooth 60fps. We pushed Wii U’s capabilities to their limits to achieve this. I think it still has a lot of potential left, and I suspect there are more ways to make use of its capabilities that we haven’t even imagined.”
Mario Kart 8 has already managed to have an impact and has pushed sales of the Wii U up on the United Kingdom market during launch week by more than 660 percent.
A lot of the extra sales were linked to a special bundle that Nintendo has put together and it will be interesting to see how the title performs in the coming weeks and whether it can have an impact on the coming figures for North America coming from the NPD Group.
The new racing game is designed to introduce a new anti-gravity mechanic, but the developers have otherwise kept the core features of the franchise as unchanged as possible, while expanding the roster and offering improved graphics.
Nintendo has also emphasized the social aspects of Mario Kart 8 and Kosuke Yabuki says that he expects that plenty of gamers will use the TV channel included to share content with friends and the larger community.
He adds, “When we were preparing the automatic highlight reel feature, we wanted users to share these videos with others, not just watch them by themselves. For example, after uploading a reel to YouTube, you can re-watch the highlights of your online battle the next day in your office, or at school or even on your smartphone.”
This is the first time that the company has integrated smartphones into one of its video game experiences, even though it has said that there are no plans to actually launch games for them.
The Wii U has performed worse than Nintendo has predicted, but strong performance coming from both Mario Kart 8 and the upcoming Super Smash Bros. could revive the long-term prospects of the device.