When the recent Splatoon 3 update was announced, fans were excited. Aside from the crisper graphics on a Switch 2, players were excited to experience cross-play between the last and current-gen consoles.
However, now that the update is here, it would have been better to remove cross-play altogether. Granted, the Switch 2 player base is nowhere big enough to have its own multiplayer scene, but Nintendo shouldn’t have made the game look worse on original Switch hardware.
Splatoon 3 was a great-looking game on the original Switch. The art style still looks great, and a ton of locations are gorgeous to look at. Whether fans are playing this on single-player or online multiplayer, visually, there’s a lot to enjoy here. It should have stayed that way, but Nintendo has messed things up.
For the most recent update, they told fans that the visuals would be downgraded in certain areas so that performance could stay consistent between the two consoles. This has made the game look like a downgrade compared to how it used to look. Simply put, Splatoon 2 might be the best-looking entry on the original Switch.
Plenty of fans might not care about the downgraded look of Splatoon 3, as gameplay is king. After all, this game focuses on multiplayer, and making things smoother will be the top priority for most players. Some might not even notice the visual downgrade when playing the game, so more power to them.
But just knowing that Nintendo downgraded a game that is already running fine on their lower-end system is pretty depressing. If anything, it feels like they made the game look worse on the Switch so people would migrate to Switch 2 even faster. That’s annoying because not everyone can immediately jump into a new console generation, so making existing titles look worse feels like a despicable move.
With Splatoon Raiders coming to the Switch 2, we wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo ends up developing Splatoon 4 on the new system soon. Giving their hybrid platform a killer app like that would give players more reason to pick this system up. Plus, it would prevent Nintendo and other devs from making last-gen games look worse on older systems just to keep up with the shiny new console.
Here’s hoping that Nintendo backpedals from the move and makes Splatoon 3 look good on the original Switch again. At the least, they should give original Switch owners a graphics slider or the option to play with Switch 2 players. Cross-play should be a great option for everyone, but this update sacrificed something that was already good on last-gen hardware.
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