Still not a reason to justify why the app for voice chat is okay. The game is played by the world. Not just Japan. A movie flopping everywhere but one country, does not save it from being a failure. Unless you're warcraft.

I didn't miss voicechat for the first Splatoon. It's usually just a bunch of senseless chatter anyway. But man oh man do I wish had proper voicechat for Salmon Run.

Well everyone has a smartphone in japan for one. Everyone. Including grade schoolers.

That sounds about right. In the same vein, PC games have had voice chat for years, but there really isn't a big market for PC games in Japan. As pointed out, no real point of comparison. 

Has anyone tried the voice chat? As a means of tracking your stats in Splatoon 2 and ordering good through the app, it is great.

This.

Shoot, I don't use the voicechat but I check it daily just to see what stages are up or coming up soon just to determine if I want to wakee my console up for a session or two.

Probably because Japanese players don´t care much about voice chat as western players. Local multiplayer also seems to be bigger there.

You know what's annoying. The app features could of all been in splat 1 and would of given another positive use for the gamepad. Honestly it looks like the app was a port of gamepad functions.

I'm guessing console owners in the US have better residential access to highspeed internet and such than the Japanese (though that may not be true). More importantly though, this system works wonderfully for Japanese players during their long commutes, where I imagine they spend a lot more time and are more comfortable playing it on-the-go in public than western audiences.

Japan is far more accustomed to smartphone companion apps. The West is used to that functionality being built-in to the game or platform.