Kirby Air Riders Racing to Switch 2 on November 20

Nintendo has confirmed Kirby Air Riders is coming to the Switch 2 on November 20, delivering a modern remake of the GameCube racer with Masahiro Sakurai at the helm.

Sakurai — returning after finishing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — described the project as a collaboration between his studio Sora and Bandai Namco, and appeared upbeat and reflective in Nintendo’s Direct.

What’s new in Air Riders

The remake expands the roster beyond Kirby to include characters like King Dedede, Bandana Waddle Dee and Knuckle Joe. Gameplay supports up to eight players locally and as many as 16 players online across races, point challenges, battle arenas, and exploration modes.

Players pick from a variety of flying machines, each with distinct traits. Machines can be upgraded by exploring levels and collecting power-ups, letting you tailor durability, speed and handling to suit different events.

Multiplayer and live features

With 16-player online support, matchmaking, latency handling and session persistence will be crucial. Nintendo is also teasing preorder-era content: Switch Online subscribers can already hear seven tracks from the game via the Nintendo Music app.

Why this matters to developers and studios

Releasing a multiplayer title on new hardware brings both opportunity and risk. Ramping to 16-player matches changes bandwidth and synchronization requirements. Upgradable vehicles and diverse modes need telemetry to spot imbalances and monetize fairly without breaking player trust.

Think of launch like a concert tour: great rehearsal sets expectations, but the first stadium show reveals where the rigging and sound checks fail. Stress tests, staged rollouts and fast rollback paths protect the player experience when tens of thousands log in at once.

For studios, concrete priorities include:

• End-to-end stress testing on 16-player sessions and simulated high-concurrency spikes.
• Telemetry design for progression, matchmaking fairness and retention signals.
• Netcode optimization and rollback strategies to mask latency in fast-paced races.

Kirby Air Riders arrives as a reminder that beloved IP can find new life with careful modernization. For players, it’s about nostalgia and new chaos. For teams shipping it, it’s a complex technical orchestration — and one worth preparing for well before November 20.

QuarkyByte’s approach is to combine telemetry-first design with runbooks and staged rollouts, so studios can scale multiplayer, tune progression and keep launch-day outages at bay. If you’re building on new console hardware, now is the time to rehearse at scale.