Isn't it rather likely that longer modes and matches will roll out eventually? I find it hard to believe that they'll restrict everything to only 3 minutes in the long run (pun intended).

As for screaming and swearing on the voice chat; do they think that the pre-teen boys playing Call of Duty and Counterstrike: GO will be playing this? If so, I think they're sorely mistaken. Also, like I said, one thing is that voice chat is missing, but his reasoning is contradictory with the reasoning for holding back content.

All the staggered content roll-out does to me is making me tired of every single map before I get to play the next one. Especially when you take into account the rotation. Ugh.

That's sounds like a it's pretty lame reason for not adding voice chat. Everybody knows if gamers don't want voice chat they can just turn off the option themselves, that's what I do. For a feature such as this, let the gamers decide how they want to play not you.

One thing I'm noticing about Splatoon, is even if they claim that it fits in well with their target audience, I'm not sure they are correct.

It's a hard core game, because you are playing against real people who get really good. That means the kids don't get the success they are used to with Nintendo and get frustrated.

In the first few days, before anyone was really good,  it felt like your teammates could make up for your lack of skill, but as the game rolls on people are really good - anyone playing with a newbie 7 year old on their team - is really playing with a man down.

It's not easy to win with 3 players against 4 - the team with '3 players' usually loses.    Follow me, if that newbie 7 year old can't really hold his own, then he's on the team with only 3 good players....and so he's inevitably on the losing team.

Pretty colors or not, what happens is the game isn't very nice to the kids - who end up losing over and over again.

I still like it, its a good game...some 7 year olds will weather the losses long enough to get good at it, but the reality is, this is a different game for Nintendo, it doesn't fit in with their much easier fare.

Voice chat with friends can be added. I don't really care because I can use Skype. Voice chat with randoms I care even less about, I'd never turn it on. I also suspect that voice chat would add strain to the online connection.

I think Western gamers are used to playing games that are played almost entirely in the Americas and the UK. Their expectation for a game like this would be to communicate with the other players. But this is a global game, at the time being probably half of its players don't speak English (at least not very well). This is part of a little phenomenon I call... Western Privilege.

Splat Zones can run a bit longer, maybe about 5 minutes. They can also be over in under 2 minutes.

To be honest just from skimming the Splatoon thread on Gaf, I already don't want to talk to anybody playing this game. Whatever their age is, those guys are just as bad as the COD crowd they mock. There's definitely a hypocritical element in play here, as before launch I saw a lot of people happy for the lack of voice chat so that people wouldn't be constantly shouting obscenities at them... now that the game is out I see people (are they the same people? beats me) shouting obscenities to no one in particular on internet forums and lamenting their inability to verbally harass their inept teammates.

Yeah I agree. It's almost like "you'll enjoy what we tell you to enjoy, and if you do well enough we'll release more content". I see where they're coming from with seeing how the community matures but you can still do that and provide an adequate amount of content initially (or more than two maps at a time, at least).

Game works fine without voice chat though. Don't see why having it as an option would hurt however.

voice chat is irrelevant for this game,BUT his excuses still remain stupid

Piss poor explanation, hand holding, overreaching control.

If I wanted to get better at a single weapon or map I would just choose it, no need for a dev to tell me what to do. If I don't like voice chat I can mute it, you don't need to take it away.

Seems like Nintendo obsession for control is still intact. Label it child only and call it a day.

I'm of two minds. On one hand paying $60 for what's in the game and the promise of more content is like having a season pass built into the base package, which I don't like. On the other hand, I don't subscribe to the view that 100% of a game's content should be playable immediately upon startup. Of course in most games you have to earn the ability to play late-game content by completing the content that comes 'before' it, but there are also instances of games like Animal Crossing, a heavily calendar-based game where certain content is only available on specific days. Then there are games like Fire Emblem: Awakening and Monster Hunter, which have loads of free DLC that is fully ready at launch (at least in the late Western releases), yet is steadily distributed over the course of several months.

In the end the reason Splatoon upsets people while Fire Emblem and Monster Hunter do not is because the latter two games had hundreds of hours of content in the base game, while Splatoon is considered short without its DLC. I think that's a valid complaint, or at least I did until Nintendo released a huge expansion for the game three days after release. Thankfully there's a very simple solution to this temporary shortage of content, which is to not buy the game until that shortage has become an abundance.

Voice chat is not something that was "taken away." It was never in the game to begin with. Understand that to implement it would cost development resources as well as system resources during gameplay. That's quite a bit to ask from a team who doesn't believe it would add anything of value to their game.

The developers shouldn't talk about this anymore because their arguments are not convincing at all. Al long as the new content keeps coming every week or two I'm ok, voice chat however is something I really miss and want the more I keep playing this game. Still no valid reason from the developers to not put voice chat in the game and give players the ability to turn it on or off