Splatoon 3 Will Supposedly Be "One Version", Could Regional Issues Be A Thing Of The Past?

Hopefully every other region will now get the exclusive outfits that Japanese gamers got for Splatoon 2. Mightily jealous of them for that.

This is a positive move. There was a slight novelty in having region specific gear/Splatfests, but ultimately it reduced the game’s flexibility and was at odds with nearly every other first party Nintendo title.

Being able to change languages on the fly is also a nice bonus. Not… hugely necessary for the majority of players perhaps, but I appreciated being able to mix and match languages in games like BotW. I imagine it’d make things slightly simpler for Nintendo as well, just having one multilingual version.

If regional Splatfests are a thing of the past, there’ll be slightly less variety, but many region exclusive events seemed to boil down to advertising (Take no Sato vs. Kinoko no Mori, etc.) and I don’t mind less advertising in the game.

I didn't know this was a thing. I figured it would just come down to an online thing where depending on what country you connected to Nintendo'a severs from, that determined the content you received. Or maybe which region you purchased your Nintendo Switch from.

It won't. Much like other games, there will be an Asian version and a Western version.

If you don't believe me, just look at China.

Probably won’t matter to much.

I just thought of a really funny scenario.

A British kid moves to the states with his Nintendo Switch and a copy of Splatoon 2 from back home. It's his only familiarity that reminds him of his home now that he's living in a new country. He takes solace in this game that brought him so much happiness in his homeland. It's a comfort that helps him cope through this big transition in his life.

Meanwhile, he starts his first day at a new school and struggles to make friends. He's really shy, and he misses his classmates back home, making him feel depressed. But one day, he sees a boy playing Splatoon 2 on the bus ride to school. They have a conversation, and he finds out he isn't the only geek in the class! In fact, his classmates and a bunch of other kids are hanging out this weekend to squad up in the new Splatfest, and now he's invited!

Elated, the boy rushes home and kisses his copy of Splatoon 2--the old girl always comes through for him! He eagerly awaits the day of the party, which his mom will be driving him to. He finally gets there, so happy to have friends in the States, but...EGADS!

All the kids at the party are playing in the Hamburgers vs. Hotdogs Splatfest! He's stuck with the lame British one: Crumpets vs. Tiddlywinks! All the kids point and laugh at him for being the odd one out, and--tears in his eyes--he calls his mom to come pick him up from this embarrassing night he just wants to forget. He gets bullied at school every day after that. Bitter, the boy drops out of school, sells his Switch, and becomes an incel who pirates all his games on PC. He turns to a life of criminal activity and winds up incarcerated for 20 years after making one bad decision after another. No matter how good his behavior, the authorities will never let him Off the Hook.

And all this just because Splatoon 2 had regional differences. This senseless tragedy could have been avoided. For just pennies a day, you can donate to the "Squid Kids Are Mid" fund to raise awareness of this issue and get such an offensive game taken off the market. 😭

(Plz like my fanfic, I put a lot of time into it, k thx.)

@BloodyMurder
Nintendo shipped different versions of Splatoon 1/2 for each region, not one for China and one for then rest of the world.

@BloodyMurder : Splatoon 3 will include Chinese in the same version.

I wonder if they might still do regional Splatfests? Maybe it will be based on the country the Switch is set to or something. It's nice to be able to buy a copy of the game from anywhere.

@Not_Soos
Cool story

@zap-switch Thanks, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna win a Pulitzer Prize for this.

I hope so, the bast majority of Nintendo developed games released in Japan have support for multiple languages. Splatoon 2 is the only one I have bought which could only be played in Japanese. A minor inconvenience when your Japanese is lower intermediate but still annoying when I just want to relax and play something in English. Massive respect to all of those people that have no choice than to play games in English if it's their 2nd (or higher) language.

That's great news. I'm in Asia (outside Japan) and have a US eShop account and a European hard copy of Splatoon 2. I mistakenly bought the DLC from the US eShop and it was incompatible. I explained the situation to Nintendo and, fortunately, they gave me eShop credit. I had to then open a European account and buy a Euro-denominated eShop card to purchase a functioning copy of the Octo expansion. What a headache. I should have just waited and got it for free through NSO -__-

@Not_Soos I'm gonna get my best friends Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to donate to "Squid Kids are Mid".

@HotGoomba See if you can get them to donate to my GoFundMe page for an operation. Tell them I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning I break my legs, and every afternoon I break my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep.

Nintendo Online is still regional

@Not_Soos

Whilst the UK did have to continue rationing until 1954,
we never had to resort to eating tiddlywinks.

@Franklin Haha, tiddlywinks was the most stereotypically British thing I could think of on a whim. No other foods were coming to me that would've been funny.

Let’s hope they fix the voice chat and matching so we don’t have to use the splatnet app!

Welcome to 2022, Nintendo!

@Not_Soos 😂😂

I really hope this is true

I can kinda see why they did it to begin with.
Internet infrastructure is different world wide and distance can make a difference. (More so with with splatoon 2s peer2peer conections?)

Presumably they have improved their servers/set up servers instead of peer2peer using all that NOL money and thus providing a stable connection for all (well at least prevent one or two dodgy connection preventing it being a crap show for all)

Or they could do what every one else does and allow you to select your region in game.........or more advance (but still common) practice of matchmaking same local people together.
Unless someone has a decent stable connection/there are player sortages/teamed up with friends/etc

Regional gear will still be a thing, calling it now. They're gonna distribute unique codes in that CoroCoro magazine that none of us here outside of Japan can easily get so only a very bare minimum of non Japanese players will be able to get those.

Still a good thing that they're changing this though.

I bought the Japanese physical version of Okami for my Switch and it plays in English.

@Lord we can only hope

Splatoon 3 would make a good launch game for Switch 2.

(Sorry don't mind me, I was just seeing if this sentence works with any game.)

This is just ... wrong. It draws concussions completely unsupported by the data.

What we know is that we're going to get a single game version, but the Switch doesn't rely on game or system hardware to know what region you are in, it sets that based on your log in. You can make an Japanese account and access the Japanese eshop from anywhere in the world, for example.

So this is just "smart delivery", a thing Microsoft has been doing for 4 years now. You install as much of the common files as possible, and the game simple updates to be compatible with the region you log in to. For MS is goes even further, there is only one "version" of MS games for all regions AND platforms, so if you put your Xbox S disk in an Xbox series X, it automatically downloads the next gen version even though that's not what's on the disk.

Nintendo will still collect regional data based on you account, and that will be used for match making. As someone who owned both the NA and JP version of Splatoon 2, let me tell you that without that the game would be a mess. I would rather face a team of rank X NA players then a team of rank C JP players. My friends in Japan would ask me to play, and thankfully I could blame it on the VPN and lag, but holy crap are they on a different level.

Splatfests were already delivered as updates, so no change there ... you will get splatfests based on the account location. The only new thing here is you will be able to play Splatfests from any region ... BUT each region will need it's own account (so you can't play them all as the same character).

The same with match making; if you want to play on the JP servers from the west you can do that ... but first you need to change to a Japanese account.

As for the eshop, again, completely unsupported conclusion.

Yes, Nintendo COULD do that, but they could also continue to limit access to eshop based on account data. The fact that you own the same version of the game that people in JP own doesn't FORCE Nintendo to also give you access to the JP eshop. That means that you would need access to two systems to buy DLC from another region, AND it would be a pain in the butt to use (you would need a NA and JP account. Only one can be the "home" system, and guests can't buy things, so your JP account needs it own "home" system.)

So this is just a classic example of someone looking at a new feature that is supported by code and declaring on high that this feature will now be used exclusively, all other systems and features will be overwritten, and everything and anything this feature supports will be completely implemented to it's full extent.

No. All we KNOW is that Nintendo is using smart delivery. Literally nothing else HAS to change.

This is a step in the right direction. Region-exclusivr content and limiting players by region unless you joined a friend in another region was a huge mistake.

Frankly I'm surprised all games aren't like this these days. People move country, buy games from other countries, want to play with friends across the globe etc... it's still to think that you'd only want to buy and play games in and from a single market.

@Not_Soos Bruh, no wonder you're getting to pitch shows to networks with amazing writing like that!

Wait, would this mean no more region-specific splatfests? I thought it was cool that Japan, NA/Oceania, and Europe could each get their own exclusive fest

@HeadPirate I have no experience with Xbox's 'smart delivery', but a lot of this isn't correct for the Switch.

Nintendo's been commonly having one worldwide version for its games for 5 years now, since the Switch launched.
Splatoon 2 was one of the exceptions, the only one still split into three regions like the games of past systems.

For Nintendo's delivery system, one version = one set of updates.
Though yes, games can lock out features depending on account country, and Splatoon 3 could do that.

For the eShop, the different behaviours are well-known.

• Splatoon 3 having one single version means it'll work like Smash Ultimate, or Animal Crossing, or... most Nintendo games.
  If you have access to other eShops, you can buy DLCs from them, and they'll work.
• Compare that to Splatoon 2, where having a US cart means it only works with US/AU DLCs.
  If you buy the EU Octo Expansion, then it won't work. Whoops, you've wasted your money and have to bother Nintendo for a refund.
  If you import a JP gear code, then it won't work either.

For 3, you would be able to get any region's DLCs working.
You'd need a JP eShop account to redeem JP codes, but once you download them, they'd work on your non-JP game, unlike in 2.

It's something common to many games, so there's plenty of examples to look at.
Super Bomberman R has a DLC only listed in the JP eShop, but once you download it, it'll work on any copy from anywhere in the world.

Everything relating to needing two consoles and guests is completely incorrect for the Switch.
Maybe that's how it works on Xbox. If so, that does sound like a pain.

But on the Switch, all the 8 accounts can have the same home console (primary console).
You don't need multiple consoles to have multiple accounts.
Primary or not, all 8 can purchase stuff fine, the only things they can't purchase are things they already have access to because another account has already bought it.

@Not_Soos IS THAT A MOTHER(redacted) SPONGEBOB REFERENCE?!?

@Greatluigi It is, haha!

@Deltarogue Aw, thank you, you are too kind! I majored in English in college because I've always enjoyed writing and feel like I'm really good at it. I would love to author a book someday. I really didn't put all that much thought into my dumb comment though lol, so I didn't know if people would like it.

Very curious to know how these things work. Not to say that i want to know the end results

@bluesun

You're doing the same thing as the OP. This is something SUPPORTED, and therefor, it's exactly how it will be.

My point is that it's just speculation. The single region gives Nintendo the OPTION to make it a common experience over all regions, it does not TAKE AWAY the option to ... not do that. It is a choice, made game by game.

It should gets around the "I bought the wrong version" problem, if you happen to be someone who regularly buys DLC on random country's eshop without noticing how the currency and price are different and the payment option is completely different, so ... yay? But the eshop supports account locking DLC is the developer wants to, in which case you will still be boned. Again, options are not obligations.

Your also missing a key point in your explanation of accounts; everyone can buy things for the primary account's home console. This isn't a problem unless you try and buy something that account can't buy, in which case the eshop will tell you to log onto your home switch. It also is a problem if you have more then one switch and a digital copy. Unless you want to buy two copies of a game, one of you logs onto the console that owns the game as the account that doesn't (allowing you to play it because all accounts can play any game owned by the console owner) and the other logs into the console without the game as the account that owns it (allowing you to play it because you can access your own games from any switch).

My wife and I have 3 switches, one physically located in Japan, two physically located in Canada, with AN, JP, AU, and EU accounts on each. I think there just might be some things you haven't experienced because they are outside your usage case, as simply using a single copy of a physical game is much easier.

I got a Japanese version of Splatoon 2 thinking, like all other Nintendo games it would be region free, the shop told me it supported English. They lied and they later told me, on my return, they don't accept returns. It was solely in Japanese and I couldn't play it.

@Lord Yes,Pleasee!!

This is brilliant! I can play one Splatfest with my cousins from somewhere else. Thanks Nintendo!