It has been quite a big year for Splatoon, and the player numbers for the latest mainline entry apparently show it, even though it has been on the market for four years now.

That’s according to Splatoon 3 director Seita Inoue, who, in a new interview with Famitsu (translated by Nintendo Everything), said that things have been on the up and up for the game in 2026.

When discussing how pleased he is with Raiders’ success so far, Inoue revealed that “there are more people playing [Splatoon 3] in 2026 than there were in 2025, so we think they have had a positive effect on each other.”

The director didn’t give any indication of whether these are returning players or newbies, though he noted that Raiders “can be enjoyed even by players first trying out the series,” so there’s every chance that some folk had their first whiff of Splatoon with Raiders, then went back to the latest mainline entry for more.

Outside of Raiders, Splatoon 3 also received a Switch 2 update last year, boosting the game’s performance and adding a bunch of new weapons and stages, before the ver. 11.0.0 update added even more features (including health bars) back in January.

In short, despite being out for four years (when you’d assume player numbers would be dropping by now), Nintendo’s continued support and spin-off release have proven to be rather kind to Splatoon 3. A fourth mainline entry is almost certainly on the way, but we can’t see there being any rush to get it out for the time being.