PSA: Nintendo is only making a limited number of the 'discounted' Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundles

Nintendo hosted its latest Direct showcase today – it was (mostly) good times all around, with a closer look at the big Switch 2 launch title, Mario Kart World. But after all of the sweet wall riding, drive-thru costume pickups, Mega Mushrooms, and gigantic P-Switches, there’s still no pre-order date and I couldn’t help buy be fixated on the fact that the new Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle is actually a limited-run offer.

That Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle is going to even hard to actually get than we thought

No matter what just about anyone has said to this point – leaker, fancy financial analysts, or otherwise, it is basically impossible to imagine that actually getting our hands-on a Switch 2 pre-order is going to be anything but an adrenaline-fueled exercise in futility. An annoying refresh fest of frustration as Best Buy stock dwindles in seconds, leaving nothing but those dastardly scalper listings on eBay.

I could be wrong, and maybe everything will be different this time around. Maybe Switch 2, the console expected to deliver the biggest launch in history and one that happens to be releasing during a trade war, will be different. But it probably won’t be.

Start your engines folks, because rumor (and dataminers scraping the backend of U.S. retail sites) has it that Switch 2 will be going up for pre-order as early as Monday or sometime later next week, and it might be your only shot to even score the Mario Kart World bundle. You know the one that can net you the console’s flagship game for $50 instead of the exorbitant $79.99 MSRP it will launch with otherwise.

At the tail end of today’s honestly quite exciting Mario Kart World Direct livestream, Nintendo quietly reiterated with some less than entirely legible text at the bottom of a title card near the end of the broadcast that the Nintendo Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle is a limited one.

It’s not just that it’s likely going to be very had to even buy when pre-orders go live, it’s not just that it’s already quite expensive by Nintneod standards, but it’s also that Nintendo has specifically stated more than twice now that it’s only going to offer it for a few months. It appears you won’t even be able to buy this bundle at Black Friday or ahead of the holidays this year even if you wanted to…even if it was actually in stock at retail.

Nintendo has specifically stated that it will only offer this “discounted” Switch 2 console bundle until “Fall 2025.” After that, you’ll be stuck having to pay $80 for Mario Kart World.

What exactly “Fall 2025” means is unclear. But it does clearly mean Nintendo specifically intends to stop offering this bundle option altogether at some point, and that might be sometime in September or October, but perhaps even before that.

The exact wording here is as follows:

Limited-time Production through Fall 2025 (available while supplies last)

Is it actually going to stick to its guns and actually stop making this bundle after that?

What does production through Fall 2025 mean?

Is Nintendo lying to get folks to buy it now?

Does it mean it will continue to manufacture these consoles until then…or has it already manufactured as many of these bundles as its going to make for the foreseeable future and will stop selling it after Fall 2025? I think we can all safely assume stock isn’t going to last even that long if the latter is true.

I hate to sound so dire and negative here. I truly am stoked for Switch 2 and am definitely going to try my darnedest to score the Mario Kart World bundle the second it goes up for pre-order, but so are millions of other folks and I really hope we all get one. Deals on Switch 1 games were generally hard to come by in the first year or more (before Switch 2 was already on the horizon anyway), and with the already soaring price of the next-generation of Nintendo, the Mario Kart bundle I think most folks are after is going to be a seriously hot commodity, one I fear far fewer of us will actually get ahold of that we all hoped.