The great Masahiro Sakurai has foretold it, and so it shall be: the Kirby Air Riders development team is disbanding after, maybe, one final patch.
Sakurai, the Nintendo legend who created Kirby and Super Smash Bros., explains his plan for Kirby Air Riders on Twitter, in a post translated by Automaton. He makes it clear that Kirby Air Riders' newly released Ver. 1.2.0 update will be one of its last before the dreamy racing game's developers move on.
"I think we might be able to tweak it one more time," says Sakurai, "but after that, please enjoy the balance of the game as a definitive version." He explains that Kirby Air Riders' dev team will be dissolving soon, and its current goal is to make the racer airtight with balance changes and bug fixes, so that the game can withstand the next few years.
Ver. 1.2.0, for example, introduces several changes to Kirby Air Riders, including the ability to "try out courses solo in Online Matches during matchmaking," "improved communication stability during online play," and a number of other improvements, per the Nintendo website.
Sakurai has always been transparent about the fact that Kirby Air Riders is a one-and-done experience; in October, he said truthfully, "I'm not planning on making this an ongoing series. I've thrown everything I have into this game from the start." That's fine. abandoning Kirby Air Riders just gives Sakurai more time for Smash, right?
Now that Kirby Air Riders is out, everyone is making the same joke about Nintendo immediately asking Masahiro Sakurai to work on Super Smash Bros 6: "Alright. We let you make Air Riders. You know what comes next…"
