Splatoon 2 is coming out on a system that sells itself on the ability to be played anywhere, any time, in any configuration you like. That’s great, but Splatoon 2 is an online shooter- this means that you won’t be able to play it online much if you’re, say, on the bus- not unless you choose to tether it to your phone for online play. But why would you do that? That would gobble up data like nothing else, right?
As it turns out, it might not. If the Global Testfire server stress tests held over the weekend are any indication, it seems as though the game just uses 150MB of data over an hour of gameplay- 150MB. That’s paltry. It can easily help you in a pinch.
One explanation for this might be the game’s low tick rate- a game like Splatoon doesn’t need to refresh data as often as something like Overwatch does (meaning it doesn’t have to upload and download data that often). Still, there is a possibility the tick rate in the final game is higher- which means, concurrently, that data usage may go up too.
You can’t have everything, you know.