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NEWS: Splatoon 3 Game to End Regular Updates

Full disclaimer: I owned the original Splatoon but barely played it online, and played a bit of Splatoon 2 but quickly lost interest and never bought 3.

That being said, I come back to the question I had when 3 was announced: why did this game even exist as a standalone product? Splatoon 2 launched a few months after the Switch did, got about 18 months' worth of content updates, and then was left alone. Then Splatoon 3 launches a full 4 years later, at least on the surface doesn't look fundamentally different than its predecessor, and then has an active period of only 2 years itself. So Nintendo releases these games much too infrequently to be a yearly content mill like CoD or its ilk (which is a good thing), but also doesn't support the game with content updates between iterations like a true live-service model. It's in this weird in-between spot, and at least for me it's not worth a full-price release. Now if what was introduced in 3 was a $20 or $30 content update to prolong 2's life, then I probably would have paid that without much thought.

(And yes I know the real answer is "to make Nintendo money," but let's try to go a bit deeper than that.)

Nintendo just fundamentally doesn't follow the typical trends for multi-player, live-action games. The same arguments you make could easily also apply to both Smash, Mario Kart, and Animal Crossing. But as of now, it seems the way Nintendo prefers to do development is two year support cycles before switching to a different project. I think in that way you avoid developers burning out on just one type of project. It also gives them time to experiment and gain knowledge from different aspects.

You're right that Nintendo generally does things their own way, but in this particular case I think it's to their detriment, or at the very least to the detriment of my personal interest in the franchise. The examples you cited are interesting cases though. I don't begrudge Smash its completed development cycle, because it was guaranteed that it will be the only franchise entry released on the Switch, so its lifespan is baked in by default. (Also it wound up with a massive amount of content in the end.) I don't play Animal Crossing, but it's also a once-per-generation title. That's how Nintendo tends to operate with their big tentpole franchises, so Splatoon is even more of a glaring exception. Speaking of, Mario Kart 8 is the weirdest one of all: it's technically a last-generation title, but it received an enormous content update years after its original release. I know that's because it sold a staggering number of copies, but I still think it's a shame that Splatoon 2 didn't get similar treatment.

Full disclaimer: I owned the original Splatoon but barely played it online, and played a bit of Splatoon 2 but quickly lost interest and never bought 3.

That being said, I come back to the question I had when 3 was announced: why did this game even exist as a standalone product? Splatoon 2 launched a few months after the Switch did, got about 18 months' worth of content updates, and then was left alone. Then Splatoon 3 launches a full 4 years later, at least on the surface doesn't look fundamentally different than its predecessor, and then has an active period of only 2 years itself. So Nintendo releases these games much too infrequently to be a yearly content mill like CoD or its ilk (which is a good thing), but also doesn't support the game with content updates between iterations like a true live-service model. It's in this weird in-between spot, and at least for me it's not worth a full-price release. Now if what was introduced in 3 was a $20 or $30 content update to prolong 2's life, then I probably would have paid that without much thought.

(And yes I know the real answer is "to make Nintendo money," but let's try to go a bit deeper than that.)