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Former Nintendo marketing managers Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang say the best move for Kirby Air Riders may be to delay it to 2026.
Nintendo has a pretty stacked rest of 2025 all things considered, but outside of Drag X Drive in August and Pokemon Legends Z-A in October, we don't know when any of it is coming out, and last week's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase didn't shine any light on that (obviously, being a Partner Showcase and all).
However, you can kind of infer that Metroid Prime 4 will probably be first up the plate, having been playable at events as far back as April, with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment later on since gameplay footage and a "winter 2025" release is out there, and then there's Kirby Air Riders, which has a minute and a half long CGI trailer.
Despite being confirmed for "2025," Ellis and Yang – who previously served as Nintendo of America's director of social media marketing and original content, and senior manager of creator relations and original content, respectively –reckon Nintendo's best move may be to push Kirby Air Riders to 2026. This follows on from Ellis's own comments that it's "not normal" that we don't have release dates for big 2025 Switch 2 games like the first-party trio and arguably the two biggest third-party releases with Elden Ring and Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
The duo have released a new YouTube video titled "Why Nintendo Should Delay Kirby Air Riders to 2026." In the video, they go over three reasons why a push to 2026 may benefit Kirby, first being a reiteration of the previous point that "it's now August" and major games don't have release dates. Yang says, "The days of these packed release calendars for games. I don't think that's happening any more for this generation," citing Nintendo's game-a-month strategy when the original Switch launched back in 2017.
Then there's the fact that the Switch 2 has a lot of racing games already; Mario Kart World had an attach-rate of almost 1:1 with Switch 2, with only 190,000 console owners not picking up the game in the first month. Not only that, but even if you ignore available racing games with a different vibe like Fast Fusion, F Zero GX on GameCube online, and Ridge Racer, there's still Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds arriving in September to take another chunk of the mascot racing game market.
Their third reason is more interesting however. Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai is directing Kirby Air Riders, and Sakurai has expressed doubt that he could top Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. There's ongoing speculation that Kirby Air Riders is a passion project, with YouTube interviewer KiwiTalkz previously claiming that Sakurai "as a negotiating tactic offered to do another Smash if he could do Kirby Air Riders first."
Ellis and Yang both mention that you would want to keep Sakurai happy, and that unlike most cases with Nintendo, Yang says, "Sakurai holds the cards in this equation." So if Sakurai (who Yang refers to as a "perfectionist") thinks development on Air Riders needs a little more time in the oven, it's probably best to delay it rather than have a crunch that could impact his desire to work on a new Smash Bros game.
Ellis adds: "If there's anything about this game that's not going perfectly, this is not the game to burn him out on."
