Splatoon - No single player spin-off, DLC til January, why no 3DS version

A portion of a Game Informer interview with Splatoon co-director Yusuke Amano and producer Hisashi Nogami...

GI: A portion of a Game Informer interview with In a surprising twist, many players seemed to actually enjoy the single-player campaign set in Octo Valley. Does this give you any hopes or plans for a single player expansion or spin-off?

Amano: When we envisioned the single player mode, we saw it as a way of teaching those game mechanics I mentioned earlier to players and as something they would be able to take with them into multiplayer mode in the game. One thing with the single-player mode is that it was sort of a way to expand the world view of Splatoon – the sort of story, if you will – that we weren't able to do in the multiplayer mode. Regarding any kind of spin-off or expansion, rather than just releasing additional stages for the single player mode, if we wanted to do something like that, I would want to make it a larger scale update. There were elements of the single-player mode that I wasn't completely satisfied with myself.

Nogami: I really think that there's a strong connection between the two modes in the game. So we don't actually have any plans to just release a single player spin-off of the game itself due to the strength of that connection.

GI: Will we see any updates with features that aren’t necessarily new gear or maps? Some players have expressed a dislike of the current map rotation size (two) in favor of three to four per rotation. Is there any plan to make changes to that system?

Nogami: The updates to game's weapons will come to an end in January, but we will be continuing the Splatfest feature in the game after that.

Amano: After this update in January, we will of course continue to support bug fixes and balance changes to the game where we feel they are necessary. With map rotation, this is something that we envisioned from the beginning of development of the game. The idea that players would have two maps on which to play and you would take one weapon into the map and figure out the best way to move about the map and learn the ins and outs of each stage. We don't have any immediate plans to change that. Thinking forward, this is something that would really affect the structure of the game. It is something that we consistently continue to see users discussing. It's perhaps something we will start to think about as a challenge, and we would need to think of the best ways to solve that challenge, but we don't have any immediate plans to take that on.

GI: How long do you plan to release additional content for the game? Will content eventually go from free to paid after a certain period of support?

Nogami: As we mentioned earlier, the free content for the game will continue to release until January 2016 and we don't have plans to release paid DLC after that.

Amano: Considering the content that has been added after release, rather than thinking about it as free or paid add-on content, I really think of it as content that extends the ways in which you can play Splatoon. And this isn't something that we just wanted to keep giving to people for them to consume, so that they keep churning through the content. Rather, we knew that as players would play what was available – for example, getting used to a certain weapon – at that moment, they would get new weapons and maps, and have to go back to that idea of "OK, how am I going to figure out how to use this weapon? How am I going to develop strategy for this map?"

Nogami: While games definitely are a collection of content, they’re also a playground of sorts. As we continue to release content and update Splatoon, we're adding to and continuing to design that playground for people to enjoy. This is just sort of my personal take on the topic. And the Splatoon community has really developed further than we had originally envisioned, and we want to make sure we continue support for creating this playground for the players.

GI: Could the series ever work on the 3DS? Do you have any plans or hopes to make a handheld version perhaps similar to what Nintendo did with Super Smash Bros?

Amano: With the splattering of ink, which is definitely key to the game, this is something we spent a lot of time on getting the feel and the look of exactly like we wanted. I think that's something that would be quite difficult to realize on the 3DS considering its limitations.