Nintendo has pushed out a free update for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe that unlocks new features when the game runs on Switch 2. The headline change: up to eight players can now race on a single console and a single screen.
That doubles the old limit. On the original Switch, local split-screen capped out at four players. Anyone with a bigger group had to drag out extra consoles, extra copies of the game, and extra TVs. Now five-eight people can pile onto one setup.
The second big change is resolution. The update lets Mario Kart 8 Deluxe output at up to 4K when the Switch 2 is docked, a step up from the original’s 1080p ceiling. Nintendo hasn’t spelled out whether that image is rendered natively or reconstructed, but the extra pixels matter here more than usual: a 4K screen split into eight windows still gives each racer more detail than a 1080p screen split into four.
The layout appears to be two rows of four, which means each player gets a narrow, tall slice of the screen. Expect the experience to swing wildly depending on your setup. On a 65-inch TV or a projector, it should be readable. On a 27-inch monitor, good luck spotting that incoming blue shell.
Frames, please
Performance is the open question. Players who have dug into the mode believe each individual view updates at around 30fps, with the two halves of the screen refreshing on alternating frames: a trick similar to what older Mario Kart releases used for three- and four-player split-screen. Nintendo hasn’t published official performance targets for the mode, so treat that as an educated guess rather than a spec sheet.
For context, three- and four-player split-screen already ran at 30fps rather than 60fps on the original hardware, and there’s no sign Nintendo has changed that.
