>>51569851I think the communal nature of AC New Leaf helped get the word out during those growing pains. The dev team saw what people enjoyed, the customization, and focused on that for the next one. A great idea to be sure, even if I didn't agree with that direction for the series. The life sim niche has been getting a lot more traction as of late though, so I'm glad AC was able to build something to set it apart from games like SoS or Stardew, who's communities tend to overlap with AC quite a bit.
As for Splatoon, I only ever played that first game. I loved it and played it for hours, but I had my fill from that experience and haven't played either sequel. Still, I noticed kids were enjoying it a lot, so I'm very glad that it was able to reach that demographic and was able to enjoy big success as a relatively new Nintendo IP.
