In just a little while Splatoon will be going down for some planned maintenance by Nintendo. Starting at 5pm Pacific Time and going until 7pm Pacific, all Splatoon online services will be shut down while the company does some behind the scenes work on the game. Nintendo didn’t go into too many details about what the maintenance would impact, so players can likely expect to not notice any major changes when they get back in later on tonight.
Along with Splatoon, Xenoblade Chronicles X for the Wii U will be having maintenance within about this same window. Starting tonight at 5:50pm Pacific and running until 7:30pm Xenoblade will have its network services shut down. This shouldn’t be as big of an impact on the gaming experience though, as that game only has a few features that require a network connection.
Splatoon, aside from its not quite as enjoyable single player campaign, is almost exclusively played online, so this maintenance will be felt pretty quickly within its massive community. Over four million copies of Splatoon have been sold worldwide, making it one of the most successful new IPs in gaming.
The game was a big gamble for Nintendo, who has relied on tried-and-true franchises for many years. Also being an online focused multiplayer game was pretty unique for the company. The fact that it all worked out is great though, as we can expect more innovative properties from the company in the future.
