Monolith Soft has officially announced the company helped with the development of Mario Kart World.
The developer, which previously assisted with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Splatoon 2 has stated on social media it developed the “fields and character designs” for the Nintendo Switch 2 racing game.
The studio has a history of open world video game development, becoming something of an expert in that particular area given the time spent on recent Zelda titles as well as its own Xenoblade releases. As such it makes sense why Nintendo would bring Monolith Soft over for Mario Kart World given the games’ shift to a non-linear format.
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In 2024, Nintendo became the sole owner of Monolith Soft after years of holding roughly 80 percent of the company since 2007. In 2011, Nintendo would increase its stake to 97 percent of the company, after which those working there contributed to popular Nintendo series like Animal Crossing, Splatoon, and Zelda.
In recent years, Monolith Soft has largely been known for its ongoing Xenoblade series. In 2022 Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was released to high critical praise, and would continue this trend in 2025 with Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.
The original version of Xenoblade Chronicles X was something of a technical marvel in the Wii U, and its Switch version brought that same quality packaged with various visual updates, dynamic resolution scaling, and greater environment detail among other tweaks and improvements.