This is from a guest contributor to the site. A huge thanks to Justin Taylor for this article! 

Nintendo’s upcoming release of Mario Kart 7 could end up signaling a major turning point for the video game company’s online reputation. The Mario Kart DS release brought about excellent online play and same is expected with the upcoming release on December 4.

Mario Kart 7 is supposed to have the most specific and well-designed online play availability in the history of all Nintendo platforms. This is especially impressive, when you think about the fact that Nintendo 3DS games are beginning to become the company’s main resources of excellent online play. The December release will apparently have an extensive list of features, including an outstanding online community section.

This version of the popular Nintendo franchise will include upgrades to a number of different areas of game play. Some of the more exciting improvements are said to be with tracks, characters, customizing karts and other areas of play. Nintendo will also be making a number of improvements to the online play sector of the game, which will please many fans.

The community aspect of online play in Mario Kart 7 is said to include the ability to think up an original racing group. This would include the allowance to alter different aspects of the community, as well as individual rules, skill levels and item selection. This will be combined with previous online features of the Mario Kart franchise including improved sharing and statistics on screen. Each community is said to allow up to 10,000 individual members, which won’t allow for all playing at the same time, but will still make for an interesting community feature.

The online mode of the game will allow the capability to compete worldwide against other players. The feature will attempt to match players with others of a similar skill level for great game play. Within the online mode, the game will offer a people and friends option which allows for games with others on the friends list.

In addition to a strong online mode this time around, MK7 will offer up a local game mode as well. The local feature will include mostly standard game play, but will be available for competition between different copies of the game in the same vicinity.

These online features for Mario Kart 7 should signal a turning point for Nintendo. With these specs going into a 3DS game, there’s certain to be long term improvements on the horizon for Nintendo’s other platforms in the future, including the online play for Wii-U. The online play feature has certainly been a rough patch for Nintendo in the past, but the recent developments are particularly positive in regards to future development.