Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is coming out on Switch this week and if you’re curious whether the load times have been improved over the original Wii U version, the short answer is yes. In fact, the Switch version performs almost 50% faster than both Wii U versions.
GameXplain put together a short video that tests the digital and physical versions of Mario Kart 8 on Wii U and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch. As expected, the digital version of both consoles outperforms the physical version, but only by about four seconds in each case.
The real difference is that the awful loading times I complained about in my original Mario Kart 8 review are now gone on the Switch version of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Loading Times
- Switch Digital – 14.48 seconds
- Switch Physical – 18.18 seconds
- Wii U Digital – 29.06 seconds
- Wii U Physical – 33.65 seconds
So it’s pretty easy to see that you’ll be waiting on those loading screens a lot less than you would if you were playing the game on the Wii U. Does this impact your decision to get the game at all? The long loading times on the Wii U digital version of the game were one of the things I complained about with the original release, so it’s nice to see this is addressed in the Deluxe version on Switch.
Mario Kart 8 – $59.99
