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Splatoon 3 gets new ‘chill’ stages and weapons this December

Joseph Yaden
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Splatoon 3 is getting a major update called Chill Season 2022 on December 1,. This free update includes new stages, weapons, and gear, plus a twist on the Salmon Run game mode.

Splatoon 3 – Chill Season 2022 Announcement – Nintendo Switch

As part of the Chill Season, Splatoon 3 is getting two new stages: Brinewater Springs and Flounder Heights, which first appeared in the original Splatoon for Wii U. In addition, the game will get a new Roller, Charger, and Shooter, along with 10 returning weapons from past Splatoon games.

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The Chill Update also features the new Big Run event, which sends players on a mission to protect Wahoo World from the Salmonids. As shown in the trailer, this event is shaping up to be absolute chaos, offering a new twist on the Salmon Run co-op mode. X Battles are also coming alongside the latest update, and it’s unlocked by reaching elite rank in Anarchy Battles. It’s a highly competitive ranked mode meant to test top players’ skills as they aim to climb the leaderboards.

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When the update goes live, be sure to check out the in-game vendors for new seasonal gear, custom titles, victory emotes, stickers, and other stylish items.

The Chill Season 2022 update is only a fraction of what Nintendo has in store for Splatoon 3. As the company announced previously, Splatoon 3 will be supported with content for at least two years, with new  modes, items, maps, and other features to enjoy. While much of the planned content will be free, Splatoon 3 will also receive paid content, similar to the Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion.

Keep in mind, players must be subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online to enjoy Splatoon 3’s additional content.

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Nintendo has confirmed reports that it won't be participating in E3 2023, meaning the gaming trade show will be missing one of its key vendors when it returns in-person this June.
"We approach our involvement in any event on a case-by-case basis and are always considering various ways to engage with our fans," a Nintendo spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. "Since this year’s E3 show didn’t fit into our plans, we have made the decision to not participate. However, we have been and continue to be a strong supporter of the ESA [Entertainment Software Association] and E3."
After taking 2020 and 2022 off and being digital-only in 2021, this year was supposed to mark the grand return of E3, which was once a dominant game industry trade show that attracted every big video game company. Although Sony hasn't participated since 2019, it still came as a shock in January when IGN reported that both Nintendo and Microsoft would not be attending E3 this year as well. It appears that the report is true, as Microsoft has not confirmed any E3-related events outside of its independently run Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase.
Nintendo skipping E3 2023 not only takes away a vendor that dominated the show floor in previous years, but also raises questions about whether or not the company will hold an exciting Nintendo Direct around then. While Nintendo typically holds a big showcase with lots of first-party game announcements around June every year, in 2022 it only held a third-party driven Partner Showcase in June. Now that we know it won't be at E3 2023, we're left to wonder when exactly then next big Nintendo Direct will be. 
E3 2023 will take place between June 13 and June 16, but don't expect Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft to have a big presence there.

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Don’t expect Zelda’s $70 price to become the new Switch standard, says Nintendo
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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years. 
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To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
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When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
"If you are going to make a game $70, it's going to be the follow-up to one of your most critically acclaimed and bestselling games ever," Jijiashvili tells Digital Trends. "I don’t think that this means that $70 will become the standard price for all major Nintendo releases. It's worth noting that Metroid Prime Remastered is priced at $40. It's clear that Nintendo will remain flexible about first-party title pricing."

It makes basic financial sense for Nintendo to ask for a little bit more for a game it knows will be one of the biggest releases of 2023. But what factors in the game industry and world's economy at large caused Nintendo to make this decision? 
Priced Out
For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
"The games industry has already been experiencing a lot of inflationary pressure," he explains. "AAA games are much more expensive to make now than they used to be, but prices have actually been declining in inflation-adjusted terms -- if prices had risen with inflation since 1990, they would now be over $90. On top of that, we’ve had a big burst of general inflation, meaning that publishers are looking at big increases in everything from salaries to tools. It’s going to be really hard for most publishers to avoid passing on all those extra costs at some point."
Jijiashvili provided us with a graphic created by Omdia that "shows what the typical price points for each generation would look like if you adjusted for inflation." As you can see, the inflation-adjusted prices are only exponentially growing, and the big game pricing shifts the graph highlights were all technically not even enough to keep up with inflation when they happened. 

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Nintendo has a tricky task on its hand with Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe. The upcoming Nintendo Switch release revives a 2011 Kirby entry that was liked well enough by fans at the time, but it’ll launch in the shadow of the pink puffball’s best adventure, last year’s transformative Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Though a wave of love for Kirby should help Return to Dream Land get some extra eyes, it’ll need to do a bit more than visually touch up an old platformer to fully capitalize on that success.

The good news is that developer Hal Laboratories seems up to that task. I saw around 30 minutes of gameplay from Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe, showing off some of the rerelease’s new features. While its core platforming remains unchanged, standing up as a return to form for the series, its enhancements have me excited to dive back into Dream Land -- especially once I saw Kirby’s new mech suit in action. Though I'm more interested in some genre experiments here which see Hal testing promising new 2D platforming ideas in a safe package.
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Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe will be familiar whether you’ve played the original version or not. It’s a straightforward 2D Kirby game where players inhale enemies, get copy abilities, and collect a whole bunch of stuff. The added twist during the Wii era was that it featured four-player co-op, which returns here, though that’s not as much of a special selling point in 2023 as it was in 2011. There are some key new additions, though, that should entice Kirby fans back.

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