There's already a massive userbase with Splatoon 2 on the Switch, can it really outsell that one, much less Animal Crossing?

The Splatoon 3 launch is going to be big, but my understanding is there isn’t quite the hype for it that there was for Animal Crossing.

With that said it’s still got the potential to have the second best launch of any Switch title and become the seventh Switch game to clear the 4 million copies sold in Japan barrier.

However I feel like the thing that’s going to stop Splatoon 3 from reaching the top eight slots of best selling games of all time where it can be compared against the second best selling Mario and Pokémon games is going to be the lack of legs from being a Switch evergreen title late in the systems life.

The other games in the top places of the Switch charts have had a chance to sell well above 3 million copies in Japan as evergreen titles. This is well after the initial sales rush.
Splatoon 3 gets about two years before the successor to the Switch appears and I feel like Switch game sales will start to noticeably decline after 2022 as sales of the system slow down in Japan.

I guess the other point is that while I’m excited for Splatoon 3 it’s going to be a tremendous challenge to push the series forward noticeably on the same hardware.
I believe they’re up for the challenge and have exciting ideas I couldn’t possibly think of or implement, however there’s some things we fans want from the series that they cannot possibly deliver because of hardware limitations.

Maybe the successor to Switch will be just as popular as current gen Switch in Japan and Splatoon 4 will be the game that clears nine million copies in Japan and competes for Japan’s best selling game of all time title.

I'm failling to understand how appealing western media and critics will lead to an increase in JP sales

It will surely help in West, but JP don't see to bother with critics at all

here we are

shout out to the other person that voted Splatoon 3 :D

Hurray!! Lol

You're a genius.

How do you do this Tbone?

He made a pact with the devil and is an alien

Physically before they dropped out of the top 30 the PS5 version sold 51k and the PS4 sold 71k. It could be around 200k now with digital.