Splatoon Raiders Devs Discuss Why Its A Spin-Off And Not “Splatoon 4”

Nintendo has published the latest installment of its Ask The Developer series, this time focusing on the upcoming Splatoon Raiders.

Splatoon Raiders is the first spin-off title in the franchise, and part of the feature discussing why the team chose to work on a spin-off instead of a 4th game in the series. Essentially, after 11 years of working on the same concept, they thought it would be interesting to try something a little different from the competitive focused mainline entries, and perhaps make way for a new entry-point into the series for players.

Producer Seita Inoue: We’ve been going full speed ahead for over 11 years since the series’ launch, developing and updating three titles along the way. We thought it might be interesting to create something with a slightly different approach to gameplay, where you can really savor the action on your own. Splatoon isn’t just about competitive play; it also includes cooperative modes like Salmon Run and a single-player Story Mode. So, one of our motivations for developing this game was our desire to create a new entry point into the series by releasing these non-competitive elements not just as a secondary feature, but as a standalone spin-off. That said, we will continue to develop competitive gameplay going forward. That’s why we developed this game as a spin-off and not as “Splatoon 4.”

Director Yoshihiko Ito: Originally, around the time our work on updates to Splatoon 3 was winding down, we were exploring whether we could develop a single-player experience that players could dive into to their heart’s content, leveraging the gameplay of Salmon Run. Salmon Run is a part-time gig for squids, where four players* team up to take down Salmonids and collect Golden Eggs. We thought that if we could adapt it for single-player, it might result in something hectic yet exhilarating. We’d discussed developing the next Splatoon game for Nintendo Switch 2, and that being the case, we thought we could really take advantage of the system’s performance. This prompted various experiments, such as ramping up the number of Salmonids for the “ultimate multitasker” experience, where a single player battles them all.

The full Ask The Developer feature goes into a lot more detail about the game’s development, including the environment and character design for the deserted islands setting. You can check it out via the link here.

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