Nintendo Credits Kirby Air Riders And Pokemon Legends ZA For Switch 2’s Japan Holiday Success

Nintendo made some surprise revelations about Switch 2’s success in Japan over the holidays.

Shuntaro Furukawa said this in the Q&A of their latest financial meeting:

The backdrop to hardware sales in Japan trending better than our expectations was the release of Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and Kirby Air Riders during the holiday season building on the initial momentum of Nintendo Switch 2 hardware.

We believe that users in Japan saw these titles as an opportunity to transition to Nintendo Switch 2 at a relatively higher rate compared to Nintendo Switch owners outside of Japan.

While everyone expects Pokémon to be a system seller, we suspect our own readers may not have expected Kirby Air Riders to have played that role in Japan.

But this only highlights how popular Kirby remains in Japan to this day, with various Gachapon and other merchandise still selling well outside of the video games.