I may have given an extremely harsh review towards Splatoon Raiders on my Youtube channel, but there is no denying that the game has been insanely popular among most other players. From where I’m standing it seems to be a simple matter of preference: I find the game repetitive and simplistic, but other people love it for that reason. This very may well be a situation in which a game simply doesn’t appeal to me personally. The game certainly isn’t bad, and I feel as if it needs to be stated that perfectly fine with people enjoying the game even though I personally didn’t like it.
However what I find most interesting about Splatoon Raiders is how it has very successfully tackled a genre that Nintendo has never attempted to tackle before: The looter shooter. Over the past decade games like Borderlands and Destiny established this new sub genre of online shooter which prioritized cooperative gameplay over traditional competitive online matchmaking.
However, both of these examples have had major issues in recent years due to layoffs and being unable to maintain a playerbase. In other words, Splatoon Raiders is in a prime position to cut in on that marketshare and establish itself as a legit competitor.
Ten years ago it would be unthinkable for a Nintendo first party title to compete with ‘the big boys’ in this space, but the simple reality is that Splatoon has blown up in a way that’s very uncommon for new Nintendo IPs. The narrative initially was that Splatoon was simply not good enough to compete with all of the other brands, but over the past decade the series has slowly started gaining ground over its primary competition. The ‘competitive’ online shooter space was a very hard market for the series to break into, but because of Destiny and Borderlands falling off the way they did Splatoon Raiders has blown up in a way that mainline Splatoon hasn’t.
What does this mean, exactly? It means even with all of their resources and their overwhelming advantages, the established online shooters are beginning to get outperformed by a Nintendo IP. This is a huge blow for the video game industry, one that they cannot possibly recover from. Their entire image hinges on this idea that they make ‘better’ games than Nintendo, and if consumers realize that that’s not true they are essentially finished.
Splatoon Raiders came out of nowhere and it filled a niche in the market that the industry wasn’t even aware needed to be filled. For most people, Borderlands and Destiny was the best they could get. So something like Splatoon Raiders coming out of nowhere is a major breath of fresh air- especially if they had never played a Splatoon game before. I have found myself shocked at the sheer amount of people who have picked this game up who have never played a Splatoon game before. It is absolutely incredible to see this game make major milestones- such as becoming one of the most player acclaimed games on Metacritic, ever. Ten years ago this would have been completely unthinkable. In my mind in another ten we will see Splatoon surpass all but the very biggest shooters in all genres. People don’t want to admit this, but it’s already quite a bit bigger than Doom or Halo.
What we’re seeing now is the house of cards that the industry built to downplay Splatoon is completely falling around itself. Eventually people have realized that this is an immensely fun little game and is well worth their time and attention. It’s hard to believe that we went through the entire life cycle of Splatoon 3 without youtubers admitting just how spectacular of a game it was.
But all of that came crashing down with the release of Raiders, and I feel it is only the beginning of a glorious new golden age for the IP.