New Splatoon game coming to Nintendo Switch 2 - plus massive Splatoon 3 update
The first post-launch Nintendo Switch 2 game announcement has just happened and it's a spin-off for Splatoon, with a major new update for Splatoon 3 out this week.
Now that the Nintendo Switch 2 is out, the big question is when other new games will be announced for it… and how. There are rumours of a Nintendo Direct this month, but so far no confirmation, and yet Nintendo has just unveiled a new game, via its Nintendo Today! mobile app.
That's probably going to become a regular occurrence, with the reveal including a five minute trailer that announces a spin-off called Splatoon Raiders and the Ver. 10.0.0 update for Splatoon 3.
It's not really clear what Splatoon Raiders is, but it may be another attempt to make a successful single-player mode for the game, even though the franchise is fundamentally multiplayer at heart.
We're only guessing that Raiders might be singe-player, as it's really not clear from the brief trailer, which only confirms that you play as a mechanic helping out the Deep Cut trio investigate a mysterious island.
Nintendo has tried multiple times to make single-player content for Splatoon, including via two DLC expansions, but while the Octo Expansion for Splatoon 2 was the best attempt it was super hard and will have done little to expand the franchise's appeal.
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Splatoon is hugely popular in Japan, so it was a surprise not to see it mentioned during the Switch 2 reveal and subsequent Direct. Raiders is emphatically not Splatoon 4 though, with Nintendo continuing to support Splatoon 3, which allows for cross-play with the Switch 1 and is getting improved visuals and performance for the Switch 2.
As well as giving a glow-up to the game on the new console, the update will also add new weapons and badges, with 30 new weapon kits and the return of the Urchin Underpass map from the first game. More Trending
The weapon freshness limits will also be increased and there's a new stat tracking option for keeping an eye on each weapon's power level.
Ver. 10.0.0 will be available on Thursday, June 12 but there's no indication of when Splatoon Raiders will be released. All first party Switch 2 games so far have been scheduled for this year, even if some of them don't have a specific date yet, so it's tempting to assume Raiders is 2026 or later.
The only major first party title currently confirmed for 2026 is The Duskbloods, although that's being made by Elden Ring developer FromSoftware and not Nintendo.
Given the Switch 2's surprisingly lacklustre winter line-up, some fans have speculated that Nintendo is holding back the reveal of a secret big name title for Christmas. Even though it's not as popular in the West as it is Japan, that could be Raiders but there's nothing to confirm that yet.
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Metro
5 hours ago
- Metro
Games Inbox: Is Mario Kart World too hard?
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It's got to the point where I feel I have a better chance of winning online, against human players, which doesn't seem right. Is it just me being terrible against the AI or is the game actually a lot harder than you'd think? Tolly See the fear Being able to switch from first to third person in Resident Evil Requiem seems like the obvious choice, now that it's been revealed. I'll most play in third person, like I always do, but I imagine first person will be better for some action scenes and aiming and such like. First person is always described as being more immersive but I'm not sure that it actually makes that much difference in a horror game. Resident Evil 7 was scary, but no more so than some of the earlier games, while Resident Evil Village wasn't frightening at all. It wasn't trying to be (except for that bit) but nothing about being first person made it automatically more tense, at least not for me. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. A lot of the appeal in Resident Evil is the characters and so I think it's important to see them as much as possible. I can't even remember what the main character is in 7 and Village, as I don't think you ever see his face. But I remember Rose, because she is in a lot of cut scenes. The first person-only games were a worthy experiment but I hope it's days as the only option are over. Sully The last reveal So there we have it: the Nintendo Switch 2 is the fastest selling console of all time, despite coming out at a slow time of year for games (and not during a pandemic) and being expensive for a Nintendo console. Having a lot of stock obviously helped but I still think it's an impressive achievement. What matters now is where Nintendo goes from here. I agree that their line-up of games so far is not very impressive, which is not a problem I imagined the console having, knowing how well Nintendo supported the Switch 1. I hope there is a Nintendo Direct this month but I'm not sure it would have much on anything but the games that have already been announced. I feel Splatoon Raiders was probably the last reveal for the year, which is going to leave us hanging for a long time until there's any new news. Onibee Email your comments to: gamecentral@ Bananas decision It's nice to hear from Nick the Greek! I'd be up for continuing our Mario Kart rivalry at some point if we can catch each other online. I'm not sure I have enough free time to do a photo feature at the moment but maybe at some point. I'm glad he still remembers my Zelda ones. As for the Switch 2, I have mixed feelings. Mario Kart World is superb, especially the Knockout Tour, but it's noticeable we're lacking a big new single-player at the moment. For the first Switch, we had Zelda: Breath Of The Wild which made the launch much more exciting. It's a shame Donkey Kong Bananza wasn't out for launch. I really hope it's good. It'd help if Nintendo clarified if it was developed by the Mario team. I've seen a lot of complaints about the lack of Mario game announcement, but Bananza might very well be it. Guess we'll soon find out! Ryan O'D Deferred purchase Let's forget about all this new console nonsense and concentrate on what's good. I did shelve my Switch 2 purchase for a Meta Quest 3. It was time. I'm loving the hardware and interface. This feels like the future, but I've still got feelings Nintendo-wise. Quest offers brilliant product and form and I can be the Batman or anything until I'm convinced to dip a toe into the Nintendo hype. I did double down on my Switch and got a Hori split pad and a 128GB card. I'm a Ninty boy at heart. Sorry guys but a guy's got to geek out and feel the goodness. Maybe another day. I can't, for the love of me, justify Switch 2 right now. OLED model, it shall be. D Dubya Flawed genius I thought the Romeo Is A Dead Man trailer was great, which has prompted me to look at more of Suda51's work. I know his games are always a bit rough around the edges, but which games are definitely worth playing and which are more curiosity only? I thought the State of Play had a great variety of games shown but was tainted by the spectre of Sony's profligacy in how they've managed their internal development teams. I think the most obvious reason for their silence is that they've nothing first party to show right now, but hopefully that changes from 2026 and beyond. Magnumstache GC: Our favourite thing he's done is still killer7, but we don't think it's directly available on any modern format. The first two No More Heroes games are good and so too is Lollipop Chainsaw, which just got a remaster. A lot of his stuff is quite flawed, but almost all of it is interesting. He's got a collaboration with Deadly Premonition's Swery65 coming out this year, called Hotel Barcelona, so we'll be very interested to see that. First timer I'm one of those people that has never played the two most recent Zelda games before and I'm definitely impressed by the Switch 2 Edition of Breath Of The Wild. You can tell it's an older game, a Wii U game, as you say, but the smooth frame rate is very nice and the sheer scale of the world is incredible. It seems endless at the moment and I can see from the map that I've visited maybe an eighth of it so far, which is amazing really because it already seems really big. I'm not even hating the breakable weapons that much either. Art Specialist subject Limited Run games are taking pre-orders for Toaplan Arcade Collection Volumes 1 and 2 (I'm sure both will get digital releases) for PlayStation 5 and Switch and I wondered if you could help me with the quality of the games included, I've heard of very few of them (many Truxton, which is supposed to be good?) and wondered if you thought the collections sound worth it please? Toaplan Arcade Collection Vol. 1 includes Tiger-Heli, Flying Shark, Twin Cobra, Fire Shark, Out Zone, FixEight, Dogyuun, and Batsugun. Toaplan Arcade Collection Vol. 2 includes Slap Fight, Truxton, Hellfire, Twin Hawk, Zero Wing, Vimana, Truxton 2 and Grind Stormer. Thanks for you help, keep up the great work. 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I thought the guy in charge was some kind of seasoned industry veteran? Tacle Now that we've had a new Marvel fighting game announced, and Invincible has one, it's high time that we got a new DC game. I don't particularly want Injustice 3, but I'd love a DC Vs. Capcom game. Would be a fun way to get back at Marvel, after their betrayal. Focus More Trending Email your comments to: gamecentral@ The small print New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers' letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content. You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader's Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot. You can also leave your comments below and don't forget to follow us on Twitter. MORE: Games Inbox: When will Mario Kart World DLC be released? MORE: Games Inbox: When will the Nintendo Switch 2 Lite be released? 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Metro
6 hours ago
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Fast Fusion review - 4K and 60fps on the Nintendo Switch 2
Fast Fusion – not F-Zero but it'll have to do (Shin'en) Nintendo might not want to make a new F-Zero game but the creators of Fast RMX do, with a sequel that has some of the best graphics on Switch 2. Much has been said about how Nintendo is in a slightly awkward position with the Switch 2, in that most of its major franchises were so expertly revamped and perfected on the Switch 1 that it's hard to know where to go with them from here. Do they try to reimagine Zelda once again? Or make Smash Bros. even bigger in scale? Or do they continue with more iterative and less ambitious sequels? Or maybe they should focus on other forgotten franchises… like F-Zero. Nintendo's explanation for why there hasn't been a new F-Zero in over two decades (except for online title F-Zero 99) is that there's no point unless they can come up with something new for it, especially as it's never been a big seller, that can get by on just its name. As the inspiration for WipEout, F-Zero is the quintessential future racer and its greatest entry is GameCube title F-Zero GX, which technically is a Switch 2 launch title, as it's now available as part of Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack. But if you crave something new there is an alternative, in the form of loving tribute Fast Fusion. German developer Shin'en has been making F-Zero clones since the Wii era, all with different names but always starting with word Fast. Fast RMX was a launch title for the original Switch and now we have Fast Fusion, which suffers from all the same pros and cons as the previous titles. As if to make Nintendo's point, there's precious little innovation here but what it does have is a blistering sense of speed and some of the best graphics on the Switch 2. Unlike F-Zero and WipEout, there's very little context given for Fast Fusion's races. Not only is there no attempt at a story, or even any characters, but there's no explanation for what's going on or where you are. The implication is that you're taking part in a futuristic racing championship but there's zero worldbuilding, beyond some vaguely sci-fi sounding names in the leaderboard. That doesn't really matter though and once in a race you can instantly see where all the effort has gone, with some really quite stunning visuals for a launch game. Mario Kart World's cartoon style has made it difficult to gauge exactly how powerful the Switch 2 is, but Fast Fusion frequently looks like a higher end PlayStation 4 game, and certainly much better than Fast RMX. Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. If you don't know what F-Zero, or WipEout, is then it doesn't matter, because it's not a complex concept: imagine Formula One but in the future, with anti-gravity cars and roller coaster style tracks, and that's pretty much it. WipEout had weapons and power-ups, but F-Zero and Fast Fusion do not. Instead, Fast Fusion has a boost that is, slightly counter-intuitively, activated by collecting enough coins to fill up a bar. But you can also get a boost from driving over differently coloured chevrons, while manually switching colours between red and blue, so as to match the colour on the ground – or otherwise you slow down instead of speeding up. There's also a very powerful jump and the ability to lean left and right, but those are more advanced techniques that are not necessary at first. You can knock into enemies, to send them spinning, but there isn't really an attack ability, which is something of a shame because if you or an opponent hit an obstacle you explode in a rather nice crash. Red sky at night, future racer's delight (Shin'en) Although the game has the worst rubber band AI we think we've ever experienced, and the vehicles feel a bit lightweight in terms of handling, races are a lot of fun. The track design can seem a little pedestrian (we've been spoilt by the overabundance of shortcuts in Mario Kart World) but the sheer spectacle of it all keeps your interest. If you're wondering about the name, there is a fusion process, similar to the Shin Megami Tensei series, where you can put two vehicles together, to fuse them together and get a blend of both their stats and their physical appearance. That's kind of neat but there's only three stats and there's not a lot of thought needed for which ones to splice together. This costs money to do, naturally, but while the standard game mode is similar to the Grand Prix system from Mario Kart you have to pay to unlock subsequent cups, which we wish we'd known the first time, before we spent all our money on new cars and fusions. Although it's a regular irritation when you have to repeat a whole cup, or waste time in Time Attack, just to earn a few more credits to play a new one. There's also Super Hero mode, where if you crash that's it (it's basically iron man mode, in other words). That's as frustrating as it sounds and so too, unfortunately, is the online multiplayer. There's up to four-player split screen, which is great, but there's no matchmaking for online so you either race with a friend via GameChat or… you don't race online at all. Again, it all comes back to the visuals, with 12 highly varied tracks that range from a redwood forest to deserts with sand whales jump out around you, to a race in an asteroid belt and around a futuristic city. There are four separate graphics options in TV mode, two of which are 4K, although this results in a slight blurriness that we assume is a result of upscaling rather than being a native resolution – so we stuck with the performance option, although only the Ultra Quality option is not 60fps. Fast Fusion is rough around the edges in almost every respect and, apart from its graphics, shows little real improvement over its eight-year-old predecessor. Its low price excuses a lot of its problems but at the same time it fails to address Nintendo's problem, of how to introduce new concepts to the formula. And yet between this and the GameCube games on Switch 2, this is a good as F-Zero fans have eaten in a long time. Fast Fusion review summary In Short: The best F-Zero clone since Fast RMX, with some extremely impressive visuals for a Switch 2 launch game, although the structure and track design lack Nintendo's finesse. Pros: Fantastic graphics, with a ton of options in both TV and portable mode. Solid racing action and dizzying sense of speed, especially in the higher championship levels. Four-player split screen and surprisingly cheap. Cons: The track design lacks flair and the championship structure is very irritating. Outrageously cheating rubber band AI. Vehicle fusion adds very little and online multiplayer is extremely limited. Score: 7/10 Formats: Nintendo Switch 2 Price: £13.49 Publisher: Shin'en Developer: Shin'en Release Date: 5th June 2025 Age Rating: 3 The graphics are really great (Shin'en) Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. 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The Independent
8 hours ago
- The Independent
Nintendo says sales of its Switch 2 hit a record within four days
Nintendo says it sold more than 3.5 million of its new Switch 2 gaming consoles within the first four days since its release — breaking a record for the company. In a Wednesday announcement, Nintendo said that this marks the 'highest global sales level' for any of hardware it's sold within that window of time. The Japanese gaming company officially launched the Switch 2 on June 5. Fans of the console's eight-year-old predecessor have been clamoring for an upgrade for years. Throngs of gamers stood in long lines outside stores for the Switch 2's release around the world last week — less than two months after a chaotic rush for preorders quickly sold out. Nintendo is counting on the Switch 2 to boost sagging sales. And in addition to a larger screen and new games, the console has added social features aimed at luring new players into online gaming. Nintendo has said it expects to sell 15 million Switch 2 consoles for the fiscal year through March 2026. The 3.5 million sold in the first four days includes the Nintendo Switch 2's Mario Kart World Bundle, as well as the Switch 2's Japanes e-language and multi-language systems sold in Japan. The Switch 2's baseline price of $449.99 is significantly higher than the original Switch's $299 price tag. While new bells and whistles may account for a sizeable portion of that hike, experts have previously noted that new tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump are also a contributor. Evaluating the impact of these import taxes also led Nintendo to delay its April preorders by several weeks.
