‘We’ve Been Going Full Speed Ahead for Over 11 years’: Nintendo Explains Why It Hasn’t Made Splatoon 4 — Yet
Nintendo has explained why its new co-operative spinoff Splatoon Raiders launched ahead of a fully-fledged Splatoon 4, with producer Seita Inoue saying the team wanted to create a new, more accessible entry point into the franchise. Raiders, a Switch 2 exclusive action RPG, shifts focus away from the series' usual competitive ink-based multiplayer towards single-player shooting, boss battles and story content, and has been receiving strong reviews since release.
Inoue said the Splatoon team has been "going full speed ahead" for more than 11 years since the original 2015 Wii U game, followed by Switch sequels Splatoon 2 and 3, and wanted to try a different, more solitary style of gameplay by building on existing cooperative elements such as Salmon Run and Story Mode. He stressed this was released as a standalone spinoff rather than as "Splatoon 4" precisely because Nintendo intends to keep developing competitive gameplay for the mainline series in future, though no details or timeline for a fourth entry have been given. IGN's review awarded Splatoon Raiders 9/10, praising it as the series' best campaign yet.
In short
- Nintendo releases Splatoon Raiders, a single-player spinoff, instead of Splatoon 4.
- Producer says it's a new entry point, not a replacement for competitive Splatoon.
- Mainline competitive series will continue; no Splatoon 4 details given yet.
Explained simply
Splatoon is a long-running Nintendo video game franchise that began in 2015 and has become one of the company's flagship series. The games are primarily known for their colourful competitive multiplayer battles where teams use ink-spraying weapons to claim territory, though recent entries have also featured single-player story campaigns and cooperative game modes.
Splatoon Raiders is a new spinoff released on the Switch 2 console that differs from traditional Splatoon titles by emphasising single-player and story-driven content rather than competitive multiplayer. The franchise's last main entry, Splatoon 3, launched on the original Switch in 2022.
Nintendo has released this as a spinoff rather than as Splatoon 4, which is notable given how long it has been since the last numbered entry. This strategy allows the company to explore new directions for the franchise whilst maintaining separate development tracks for different gameplay styles within the Splatoon universe.
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