The Splatoon 3 Grand Festival marked a grand farewell to the game’s regular updates

Did you attend the Grand Festival? Splatoon 3? It lived up to its name. While it actually felt like a regular Splatfest, it was a huge concert where you could see the three main bands from the game perform. It was pretty incredible.

Well, while we’re picking ourselves up from the mud and recovering from our hangovers, Nintendo announced that the Grand Festival will mark the end of regular updates for the game. This means that the only updates we’ll see going forward will be patches, and it’s unlikely that new weapons or arenas will be dropped. Here’s exactly how “Final Fest” went down in 2019 for Splatoon 2It then took about three years before Splatoon 3 issued.

However, Nintendo has (via the official Splatoon Twitter account), states that Splatoween, Frosty Fest, Spring Fest, and Summer Nights will continue at their normal times. And Big Run (thankfully), so it’s not like the game dead dead. It’s just on some kind of life support. Or not even that; it’s just rolling out.

The end of support has led some to speculate that Splatoon 4 is in the works for the Switch successor. I don’t have as much information as everyone else speculating (which is to say, none at all), but it seems reasonable. When the Switch was ready to launch, Splatoon 2 was heavily marketed. Whether or not it’s a launch window game, I doubt this is the last update we see for the series.

That means we’re going back to Splatoons live service starting point. That means a lack of content compared to Splatoon 3 at launch, while slowly building it back up as a way to retain the player base. Maybe the strategy will change, but I wouldn’t bet on it right now.

Meanwhile, Past won Grand Festival against Present and Future. I was on team Present because my therapist always told me to focus on that. She was clearly wrong. If you missed the concerts at Grand Festival, the new Amiibos for Squid Sisters, Off the Hook, and Deep Cuts will let you revisit the venue. I recommend it and will be adding them to my cart soon.

Splatoon 3 is available on Switch.