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Final Splatoon Global Testfire session plagued by connectivity issues [Update]

Nintendo's second Splatoon Global Testfire session did not go nearly as smoothly as the first. In fact, it was filled with connectivity issues, errors, and infinite loads. (Update: So it's a good thing Nintendo extended it by an hour.)

Ozzie Mejia

May 23, 2015 3:45 PM

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Update: The 4pm deadline has come and gone, but Nintendo appears to be offering some extra time (until 5pm) to make up for the earlier issues. The second hour ran far smoother, with little to no connectivity errors on the user end. This should restore some of the user faith that was starting to wane during the test's first hour, which was nearly unplayable.

Original story: As noted earlier today, today was indeed the final online test for Splatoon. But Nintendo's Splatoon Global Testfire session didn't go exactly as the publisher had hoped. In fact, the short hour-long session was largely plagued with connection issues and bugs.

Members of the Shacknews staff experienced some harsh connectivity problems, resulting in infinite loading screens, lobbies that went nowhere, and numerous error messages. One of the more frequent errors indicated that servers were completely filled to capacity. Some of the more common error messages have been placed below.

The problems weren't limited to the Shacknews staff or Chatty posters. Twitter quickly filled up with reports of users that could not get into an online session, via both the #Splatoon and #SplatoonGlobalTestfire hashtags.

On the one hand, the experience proved to be a major exercise in frustration. It doesn't leave one with a lot of confidence going into the May 29 launch date. If there's a positive to be taken away from this, though, it's that Nintendo is hopefully looking into the issues that surfaced from this final session and will have them hashed out before the game's official launch... in just six short days. We'll see how things go when Splatoon arrives on Wii U on Friday. In the meantime, Shacknews has reached out to Nintendo for comment regarding today's test.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?