I thought it was already pushing it to make the initial Switch release a sequel in the first place, for a number of reasons:
- Anyone who was suckered into buying Nintendo's worst console ever and got Splatoon for it was now stuck buying a new game and a new console if they wanted to keep playing the game. This is also true of Mario Kart 8's online mode and that sucks too (especially for people who even shelled out for the DLC) but at least that game had offline multiplayer. You might at least get a few pennies at GameStop for your trade-in. Copies of Splatoon are pretty much just an oddity for hoarders now.
- Unlike every other WiiU-to-Switch port, Splatoon 2 isn't just the entire original game plus more content; the entire single-player campaign was replaced, as was the multiplayer soundtrack (seriously, if you've never heard the original main theme, "Splattack", go look it up now, along with the original Splatfest theme "Ink Me Up"), and they will never see the light of day again. If you weren't there, you don't know what you're missing, and I guess that's true of all lost media... maybe I'm just being a grumpy old man yelling at a cloud for caring, I dunno, but...
- The original game was only two years old. Even the worst AAA companies don't shut down games that fast unless basically nobody buys them.
I dunno, maybe my impressions of the whole thing are skewed by the fact that I'm a PC gamer whose top-played game is
Team Fortress 2, a game that's still getting free content updates after almost 15 years. Lord knows that business model isn't perfect either, and has come with some of the exact same problems (no one will ever know what it's like to play this game without every character looking like they got dressed by having a wardrobe fall on them...and I still think Demoknights are ridiculous) but the game I got back in 2007 is still a functional product all these years later and runs on every computer I have, not just the one I bought it on.
To be fair to Nintendo, I'm betting they started work on this game assuming it would be released on some hypothetical successor to the Switch instead, because
everyone was expecting there to be one by now. And also to be fair to Nintendo...
they didn't go through with those plans. They didn't bribe their way to the head of the supply chain so they could squander the planet's dwindling resources on a New Switch for scalpers to buy up and resell for $1000, and release a slate of exclusives no one can play.