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noshten on 17 September 2021
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There is only one game that I think has the potential to take the crown from New Horizon in Japan

Currently the Island Making Sim is heading towards 12 million units lifetime in the country and unprecedented doubling of what it the franchise managed on the 3DS. 

Yet, I think Splatoon 3 has the potential to surpass it...

- Splatoon 3 will be launching on a 20+ million user-base in Japan

- Splatoon 3 has had twice the amount of time for development & new ideas compared to Splatoon 2 which was launched to ensure a strong launch year in Japan.

Splatoon 2 was bit bear-bones at launch(this is a combination of design - rolling out features over the course of a couple of months to ensure high interest, and lack of development time to flash out everything). The game's last big update was Octo-expansion an year after launch, & they not really updating the PvE much beyond the first six months etc. 

Overall a lot of the issues with Splatoon 2 didn't end up hurting it's potential too much as it's a new franchise that managed 10 million sales, yet when we look at how MK8D, New Horizon, Smash, Breath of the Wild etc have blown up WW, there are still ways to see the franchise grow with the latest entry. The main thing is that instead of an 80 Meta

- I expect Splatoon 3 will be supported for a minimum of 2 years, below are some of my predictions for the game

  • Single Player campaign comparable to Base Game + Octo-expansion 
  • A greater number of modes and choices(2-16 player modes)
  • PvE to actually get a lot more attention & at least 1 year of major updates
  • A greater number of ranked modes but more choices for the players(being able to choose the online ranked mode would improve the game immeasurably)
  • Having better community features will allow it to be even more viral
  • A lot of the mobile app features will be available in-game including voice chat(you still won't have VC with Randoms)

- Global Testfires for the game will be a huge viral moment for the game

I believe these timed demos will create a huge hype online because Nintendo will put a lot marketing behind them, the userbase of the Switch when these huge events start will likely approach 100 million, meaning that it could be over 25 million users trying to login to Nintendo's online system at the same time.. 

- Critical reception at launch being better than either Splatoon 1 or Splatoon 2.

Those two games didn't have as much time to cook, and the soft-launch hurt their appeal among gaming critics(especially in the West). I think Nintendo will aim for better critical reception at launch by not holding back certain features as post-launch content. Having a "hard-launch" for Splatoon 3 will ensure that the game will be received better by critics(Splat 1 has 81 meta, while Splat 2 is at 83)