Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Nintendo Switch: Splatoon 3 Edition Announced

Nintendo Switch with purple and green joy-cons that have gradients and visual details

This thing looks ridiculously gorgeous. I'd even go as far and say that this is the prettiest variant of the Nintendo Switch as of yet. It's an OLED model, of course, and comes with fancy Joy-Cons, which have ingrained details and color gradients. It's a real eye-catcher.

backside

dock

The dock reminds me of the loading screen from Mario Kart 8 with its style. It's okay, but I would prefer the plain white one, I guess. Still, it matches the Joy-Cons quite well, without drawing the attention from them, so it's fine.

Pro Controller

There is also a Splatoon 3 Pro Controller, which will be released separately, but it doesn't look as nice in comparison to the Joy-Cons. And the one for Splatoon 2 was much prettier, at least in my humble opinion, but these controllers reflect the main color schemes of their respective games, so I guess it couldn't be helped.

This also raises the questions, what's the target audience here? You would think that the Splatoon fans already own a Nintendo Switch and a Pro Controller due to Splatoon 2. Of course after five years they may be willing to invest into some fresh hardware (with the OLED model as an upgrade) and of course there are also some new fans who have missed out on the previous Pro Controller, but you can't tell me that there is anyone out there who has held off on buying a Nintendo Switch so far and where Splatoon 3 is now the game that he or she simply needs to play. Well, maybe there is, but it's an unlikely scenario... So, this seems mainly about double-dipping for Nintendo.

Anyway, I'm not a fan of Splatoon, so I probably won't buy any of this. I got the first game on Wii U, played it for a bit, but it never really got invested. However, like with Animal Crossing: New Horizons this may change, where today I regret that I didn't buy the Animal Crossing Edition two years ago, which looked also very pretty. Well, at the time I was still waiting for a Zelda edition...

Speaking of, except for a pair of not-as-good-looking Joy-Cons, which came out with Skyward Sword HD last year, we didn't really get anything for our favorite franchise. Maybe the sequel to Breath of the Wild will finally offer that fancy Zelda Edition that the fans have been waiting for since 2017. So far you could have come up with the excuse that most Zelda fans already have a Nintendo Switch thanks to Breath of the Wild, Link's Awakening, Age of Calamity, Skyward Sword HD, and so on, but obviously that wasn't a concern for Nintendo with Splatoon 3 here. And if we get one, I hope they will make something that looks even more impressive. The right Joy-Con could have ingrained details based on Link's corrupted arm for example.

However, maybe the sequel will be released between consoles again if Nintendo is ready to go for a Nintendo Switch 2. In that case we will probably never get that Zelda edition. Then again, when the New Nintendo 3DS came out, we immediately got that Majora's Mask 3D Edition. So, you never know with Nintendo. They are probably just rolling a dice and only make a Zelda edition on a six (for the Nintendo 3DS it was anything but six).


Source: Twitter (1), Twitter (2)

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