Wyrdness said:
Because the goal in Splatoon is far more simple to get into just fire your gun to make a mess and kill the opposing team all the while the game has high competitive depth as well, 3D Mario platformers tend to require a more avid approach with the player either needing to explore, solve puzzles, battle bosses and carry out specific tasks. This is why 2D Mario games outsell the 3D ones because the former are more simple and geared towards pick up and play, fact is 3D Mario is only really simple to an avid gamer not a casual gamer. |
Splatoon's goal is simple in the same sense that Guilty Gear's goal is simple. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's accessible to the casual audience. It requires the use of two joysticks, gyro sensors, I believe three of the shoulder buttons, and three of the face buttons at a bare minimum (more effective play will require seven really). You have to be adept at switching between kid and squid, have a good sense of the balance between weapons, how to work with teammates, manage ink levels, etc etc etc.
If you're not reasonably adept at these things, your experience is going to be getting splatted every few seconds, and likely losing most matches, especially if the matchmaking is as poor as the first one. Unlike a game like Smash or Mario Kart though, where casual gamers can focus on local multiplayer with friends around their level, Splatoon 2 is heavily focused on online multiplayer. Not only does this mean that you have less control over your opponents skill level, but it also means that to really get much out of the game, you're going to have to spring for the online subscription after the first few months.
Splatoon is not really a simple game, and it's not intuitive in the same sense as Mario Kart or even Smash. It also doesn't look particularly simple. It's definitely more accessible than most shooters, but it's not all that accessible compared to other genres.
Comparitively, Super Mario 3D games tend to involve a Joystick, and 2-4 buttons. Some additional buttons may be needed for camera control, but that's not essential. Controls are vastly more simplistic than Splatoon.
Puzzle solving has been deemphasized since Sunshine, and even those puzzles weren't all that complex. The goals are more complex than Splatoon, but that's balance by the fact that you can generally take the game at your own pace without the hecticness of four other active humans trying to kill you, and there is generally no time limit, or a very lenient one. There is little pressure to rush, no risk of having someone sneak up behind you or getting sniped from a completely unseen enemy and so on. If the game follows the Sunshine/Galaxy format, you are given a good deal of freedom to skip over certain challenges (in Super Mario 64 you can skip 50 out of 120 and still beat the game), and there will likely be some way that the game will allow you to mitigate challenging levels (for example the Cosmic Spirit in Mario Galaxy 2).
In terms of complexity and skill required, there's really no contest. Assuming people actually want to succeed in the game, Splatoon requires vastly more skill. I'm about 99% sure that if we showed a non-gamer or casual gamer both games and asked which one they thought is a game they could play well, Mario would win ten out of ten times.
As for 2D vs 3D Mario, it's questionable if 2D ones outsell 3D ones. They definitely did on the Wii and DS, but on the 3DS, 3D Land outsold NSMB2, and on the Wii U, the difference between NSMBU and 3D World was about a million, and without bundling it's hard to say which would have sold more. It's likely that the more casual fanbase benefitted the 2D games on the Wii and the DS, but it's also possible that this was an abberation. At this point, there hadn't been a 2D Mario game in 15 years or so, but they've been common since then.
More importantly though, it is inherently easier to navigate a character in a 2D space than a 3D space. 2D Mario is much simpler to control than 3D, but Splatoon is much more difficult to control than either. Not really a valid comparison.
