It Looks Like Splatoon 3 Will Be Using Nintendo’s In-House Server System

With Splatoon 3 right around the corner, and the Splatfest World Premiere taking place on 27th August, fans are more eager than ever to find out how the third ink-fest will play online. And prominent dataminer @OatmealDome has discovered that the upcoming game will be utilising a new in-house server system for online lobbies (thanks, Go Nintendo!).

This means that Splatoon 3 is now the third game to use NPLN, Nintendo’s in-house server system, after Monster Hunter Rise and Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Both previous Splatoon games used NEX, a system that originated on the 3DS and powered a few launch apps like your Friends List.

While this will largely be used to enhance some of the game’s new Lobby features, it will help improve some aspects of matchmaking, which will assist in the series’s peer-to-peer play. NPLN will attempt to match based on player latency and can act as a go-between if two consoles can’t connect due to the NAT types. OatmealDome goes into more detail in the Twitter thread below.

But that’s not all that’s coming to Splatoon 3. According to OatmealDome, it looks like the game will be using AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 — which was most recently used in Nintendo Switch Sports. This upscaling technology uses spatial upscaling, which uses data captured in the current frame, and as a result, can improve in-game performance and framerate while ensuring the game looks as smooth as possible.

Those are good improvements for Splatoon 3, then! The server system seems to have worked wonders for Monster Hunter in particular, and hopefully, AMD FidelityFX will keep those Tricolor Turf Wars under control. The test will be next Saturday when the Splatfest World Premiere occurs!

Splatoon 3 launches on 9th September, so make sure you grab that free demo to prepare for the first Splatfest!

What do you think about the server news? Do you hope there are other improvements to Splatoon’s online play? Let us know!