Nintendo has announced that in preparation of Splatoon 3’s imminent release, it’s going to be giving the Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion DLC. If you’re subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack and own the base game, you can download the expansion for free. The costlier tier for Nintendo’s subscription service also offers free access to expansions released for Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Splatoon 3, meanwhile, is not far away either. It launches exclusively for the Nintendo Switch on September 9, so stay tuned for more details on that in the lead-up to its release.

Ahoy #NintendoSwitchOnline + Expansion Pack members! You can now enjoy the #Splatoon2: Octo Expansion DLC as part of your membership at no additional cost.

Not a member? Join today! https://t.co/E9AnYyH01N pic.twitter.com/pt3Ufk0d0k

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) April 22, 2022

While the placements of the ten games haven’t changed from the data Nintendo provided for the previous quarter, each of the ten has seen an impressive jump in sales, with some seeing particularly significant boosts. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, for instance, remains the best-selling Switch game with its sales refusing to slow down. Having sold over 1.6 million units over the last three months, its lifetime sales currently stand at 34.85 million. In fact, it has now surpassed the lifetime sales of Mario Kart Wii, thus becoming the highest-selling game in the series.

Meanwhile, Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ sales have certainly slowed down as compared to the ridiculous pace the game was selling at last year, but even so, it managed to sell nearly a million units over the previous quarter, with cumulative sales currently at 34.85 million. Other games that have seen similar increases include Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Pokemon Sword and Shield, among others. 

Interestingly enough, Ring Fit Adventure saw quite a jump as well, selling nearly a million units, with lifetime sales currently standing at 12.21 million units. That’s just a little over 400,000 units short of Splatoon 2’s total, which feels like a mighty impressive for a game as uniquely niche as Ring Fit Adventure.

You can check out the list of the ten best-selling first party Nintendo Switch games below:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has sold 33.89 million units while Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is at 24.77 million thus far. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has 23.20 million sales to its name followed Pokemon Sword and Shield at 21.85 million, Super Mario Odyssey at 21.40 million and Super Mario Party at 15.72 million.

Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! are at 13.57 million while Splatoon 2 at 12.45 million and Ring Fit Adventure at 11.26 million round out the list. It should be interesting to see where titles like Shin Megami Tensei 5, Metroid Dread, Mario Party Superstars and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl rank in the coming months. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

One of the most unlikely successes for Nintendo over the last few years is probably the Splatoon series. The quirky competitive shooter is all about squids, who are also kids, who spray ink on each other. While it feels a little too eccentric for its own good, it found major success with the first title on the Wii U, and continued that with Splatoon 2 on Switch. Major support for the latter has ended, but it seems next month we’ll have something of an encore.

As announced on the official Nintendo Versus account below, next month will see a bonus Splatfest. It’s a callback to the very first Splatfest in the game: Mayo vs Ketchup. The event will again transform the main plaza into a party sight as you are forced to chose a side in this heated debate to see which side will dominate. It seems we won’t see a third game for quite some time, so might as well jump back in.

Splatoon 2 is available now exclusively for the Nintendo Switch, and the Splatfest will run from May 22nd to the 24th. A special demo will also come starting April 30th.

It’s a #Splatoon2 #Splatfest so contentious we have to do it twice! #TeamMayo and #TeamKetchup are back and it’s up to you to determine which sauce is the boss!

This bonus one-off Splatfest kicks off 5/22 at 3pm PT and ends 5/24 at 3pm PT. pic.twitter.com/n5Ar6EUkJ0

— Nintendo Versus (@NintendoVS) April 22, 2020

Inkoming! A Special Demo event for #Splatoon2 is on the way! You’ll be able to play Turf War, Ranked Battle, Salmon Run, and more beginning 4/29 at 11pm PT, to 5/6 at 6:59am PT. pic.twitter.com/U8tYN4SAVn

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) April 22, 2020

Super Mario Party

The infamous ruiner of friendships debuts for the Nintendo Switch. Super Mario Party takes the more traditional approach to the series’ formula, introducing new mini-games, some with motion controls, and a new mode called Partner Party where teams of two can work together. There’s even a mode called Toad’s Rec Room where multiple Switches can be combined for gameplay across multiple screens. Super Mario Party captures the amazing feeling of losing to never-ending nonsense, which may or may not be your definition of a good time.

Though series producer Hisashi Nogami was pretty adamant about Splatoon 3 not being in development, something seems to be going on with the series. In a new tweet, the official Japan account for Splatoon wished fans a happy 2020. However, the letters “SOS” are seen in the water.

Morse code for “Save Our Souls” and originally used for maritime matters, the SOS here could be hinting at something. Of course, it could be nothing at all as well. And even if the development team does have a tease in the works, it’s hard to see it being a sequel to Splatoon. An expansion to Splatoon 2, perhaps, but a full-fledged sequel?

It would be interesting to see what the project is. After all, major content updates and events have ceased for Splatoon 2 and it’s receiving weapon and balance changes only. The next patch, version 5.1.0, is set to arrive next week and will tune weapons like the Splattershot and Luna Blaster. We’ll hopefully see if there’s any significance to this tweet in the coming months.

みなさん、いかがお過ごしだろうか？
のんびりお休みされている方も、お忙しい方もいらっしゃるだろう。
クマサン商会も元日早々バイトを募集しているようだ。
新年初シバキにおいでいただければ幸いだ。
本年もよろしくお願い申し上げます。 pic.twitter.com/nfsXWNIW0s

— Splatoon（スプラトゥーン） (@SplatoonJP) January 1, 2020

Despite Nintendo’s Splatoon 2 no longer seeing new events or content, the development continues to push out balance changes and patches. The next patch is version 5.1.0 and will release on January 8th 2020 for North America. It contains mostly weapon balance changes and not much else.

For instance, the Splattershot, Tentatek Splattershot and Kensa Splattershot have had their ink consumption reduced by about eight percent. The Luna Blaster and its Neo variant along with the Kensa Luna Blaster have received a rather odd change – after firing, the time needed to do something else has been reduced by “4/60 of a second”. Ink consumption on these weapons has also been reduced by roughly 17 percent.

Check out some of the patch notes below with the full notes here. You can also read our review for the base game here to see if it’s worth checking out. Now the real question is: Will Nintendo look to release a sequel in the near future, especially given how popular Splatoon 2 is? We’ll have to wait and see in the coming years.

Ver. 5.1.0 (Releasing January 8, 2020)

Changes to Multiplayer

Weapon Change

Splattershot, Tentatek Splattershot, Kensa Splattershot, Hero Shot Replica, Octo Shot Replica

• Decreased ink consumption by roughly 8%.

Luna Blaster, Luna Blaster Neo, Kensa Luna Blaster

• Decreased amount of time after firing before being able to take further actions by roughly 4/60 of a second.
• Decreased ink consumption by roughly 17%.

L-3 Nozzlenose, L-3 Nozzlenose D, Kensa L-3 Nozzlenose

• Increased ink consumption by roughly 15%.
• Reduced the effect of the Main Power Up gear ability.
• Changed the amount of gear ability required to deal up to 33.3 damage from 1.8 times to 2.4 times the amount of the primary gear ability.
• Each secondary gear ability is worth 0.3 of the primary gear ability.

Splat Charger, Firefin Splat Charger, Kensa Charger, Hero Charger Replica

• Slightly narrowed the area covered by ink droplets from fired shots.

Bamboozler 14 Mk I, Bamboozler 14 Mk II, Bamboozler 14 Mk III

• Reduced the effect of the Main Power Up gear ability.
• Changed the amount of gear ability required to deal up to 99.9 damage from 4.1 times to 4.4 times the amount of the primary gear ability.
• Each secondary gear ability is worth 0.3 of the primary gear ability.

The Division 2 might be the highest selling 2019 release for the year so far globally, but as far as Japan alone is concerned, things are quite different. As per sales data compiled by Famitsu, the highest selling game of 2019 in Japan during the year’s first half has been Kingdom Hearts 3, which has sold over 830,000 copies so far. That’s really not surprising, considering the fact that it’s a Square Enix RPG – which are almost always guaranteed to do well in Japan – not to mention the fact that the hype and anticipation surrounding the long-awaited sequel prior to its launch were through the roof. At last count, the game had also crossed 5 million units in worldwide shipments, so it tracks that it’ll be doing very well in Japan as well.

The Division 2, incidentally, comes in at 21st place, having sold over 112,000 units. What’s surprising is that it has been outsold by BioWare’s Anthem, which occupies 20th place with over 114,000 units sold. Several other major new releases for the year have also done pretty well and managed to break into the top 10. Capcom’s Resident Evil 2, arguably the best game of the year so far, is Japan’s fourth best-selling game for the year so far, having sold nearly 400,000 units (Resident Evil 2 had crossed 4.2 million units in worldwide shipments at last count). Meanwhile, FromSoftware’s incredible Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice occupies ninth place, with sales of over 260,000 units from the day of its launch till the end of June. Devil May Cry 5 and Days Gone have also sold well, occupying fourteenth and fifteenth place with sales of over 183,000 units and over 182,000 units respectively.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate, which launched in December of last year, has also performed very impressively, coming in at second place with nearly 780,000 units sold, and not that far behind Kingdom Hears 3. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, having launched in January, follows behind in third place, with over 643,000 units sold throughout the year so far. The recently released Super Mario Maker 2, which has been topping Japanese weekly sales charts since its launch, is in at twelfth place. Unsurprisingly, various other older Switch games have also continued to exhibit long legs and become among the top performers of the year in its first half. The likes of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Switch version of Minecraft, Splatoon 2, Pokemon Let’s Go, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Super Mario Odyssey have all figured in the top 30.

You can check out the full top 30 for the first half of 2019 below.

Famitsu Sales: H1-CY 2019 (2018 Dec 31 – 2019 Jun 30) [Followed by lifetime sales, including sales before 2019]

01. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 838,927 / NEW
02. [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 779,845 / 3,140,500 
03. [NSW] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 643,426 / NEW
04. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 – 393,688 / NEW 
05. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 318,492 / 2,348,789 
06. [NSW] Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! / Let’s Go, Eevee! – 312,278 / 1,565,955 
07. [NSW] Minecraft – 305,640 / 830,685 
08. [NSW] Super Mario Party – 284,170 / 1,049,023 
09. [PS4] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – 260,223 / NEW
10. [NSW] Splatoon 2 – 224,791 / 3,099,211 
11. [PS4] Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – 215,421 / NEW 
12. [NSW] Super Mario Maker 2 – 196,153 / NEW 
13. [NSW] Yo-kai Watch 4: We Are Looking Up at the Same Sky – 191,097 / NEW 
14. [PS4] Devil May Cry 5 – 183,627 / NEW 
15. [PS4] Days Gone – 182,787 / NEW 
16. [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 168,697 / 1,348,389
17. [NSW] Yoshi’s Crafted World – 153,197 / NEW 
18. [NSW] Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission – 125,308 / NEW 
19. [PS4] Jump Force – 125,057 / NEW 
20. [PS4] Anthem – 114,570 / NEW 
21. [PS4] Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 – 112,238 / NEW 
22. [NSW] Dragon Quest Builders 2 – 109,728 / 275,146
23. [PS4] Super Robot Wars T – 102,767 / NEW 
24. [PS4] Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain – 84,397 / NEW 
25. [NSW] Super Mario Odyssey – 80,407 / 1,980,613 
26. [NSW] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball – 75,505 / NEW 
27. [NSW] Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum ‘n’ Fun! – 75,318 / 345,733 
28. [PS4] Dragon Quest Builders 2 – 72,980 / 236,862
29. [PS4] One Piece: World Seeker – 70,164 / NEW 
30. [NSW] Kirby Star Allies – 68,085 / 732,900 

[Via ResetEra]

This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo is coming up, and there’s already plenty of intrigue over what to expect. Just like other companies, Nintendo has thrown its proverbial cap in the ring and announced that its E3 2019 Direct presentation will take place on June 11th. It will begin at 9 AM PT and talk about the Nintendo Switch titles releasing this year.

There will be other Nintendo events taking place during E3 as well. The Splatoon 2 World Championship 2019 is on June 8th at 11 AM PT, while the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate World Championship 2019 competition is slated for the same day at 2 PM PT. You can also expect Treehouse: Live streams from June 11th to 13th to offer more footage of upcoming Switch titles.

Nintendo has yet to hint at what the Direct presentation will contain. However, it wouldn’t be strange to see gameplay footage for titles like Daemon x Machina, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening Remake. Here’s hoping for updates on Animal Crossing Switch, Pokemon Sword and Shield and Luigi’s Mansion 3 as well, among other titles.

Join Nintendo for #E32019 starting on 6/8 with the World Championships for #SmashBrosUltimate and #Splatoon2. Then, be sure to follow along during the days of the show to find out the latest news for upcoming games on #NintendoSwitch. Check out https://t.co/0lcDwkB4FE for more! pic.twitter.com/39UaqVaF4i

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) May 9, 2019

As part of their latest earnings release, Nintendo have released updated lifetime worldwide sales figures for their games published on the Switch, which have been selling with impressive pace over the last three months. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has been the best performing of the bunch. At 12.08 million units by the end of December 2018, the fighter has now sold a total of 13.81 million units.

Meanwhile, Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! saw a slowdown in sales, selling about 600,000 units over the past quarter, to get to a lifetime total of 10.63 million sales as of March 31st, 2019. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has continued to sell at a fast clip, with a total of 16.69 million sales so far (of which 7.47 million sales came in FY 2018/19). The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has also been selling strongly, and now sits at a total of 12.77 million units sold to date.

Nintendo’s more recent 2019 Switch releases have also gotten off to solid starts. January’s New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe has managed to sell 3.31 million units, while Yoshi’s Crafted World sits at 1.11 million units. Interestingly enough, even Mario Kart 7, a 3DS game that launched all the way back in 2011, has continued to sell strongly. It now sits at a lifetime total of 18.26 million copies.

You can find a full list of Nintendo’s updated figures for sales of Nintendo Switch titles as of March 31, 2019 below:

• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 16.69 million units
• Super Mario Odyssey – 14.44 million units
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 13.81 million units
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 12.77 million units
• Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! – 10.63 million units
• Splatoon 2 – 8.7 million units
• Super Mario Party – 6.4 million units
• New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 3.31 million units
• Mario Tennis Aces – 2.64 million units
• Kirby Star Allies – 2.56 million units
• Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze – 2.25 million units
• Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker – 1.18 million units
• Yoshi’s Crafted World – 1.11 million units

In total, Nintendo sold 118.55 million units of software throughout the financial year on the Nintendo Switch, which is a year-on-year increase of 86.7 per cent, and also exceeds Nintendo’s projections of 110 million software sales for the financial year. Of those, 23.91 million copies were sold in this quarter. For FY 2019/20, they are projecting 125 million software sales on the Switch.

In comparison, 13.22 million software sales came on the 3DS (a 62.9 YoY decrease), with 2.14 million of those arising out of this quarter. Their projections for software sales on the 3DS for the financial year were sitting at 13 million, which they have managed to exceed (just about). For FY 2019/20, they project a much lower 5 million units of software sales on the 3DS.