After a long period of silence, the game has its release date.

Back in September of 2021, Nintendo revealed the development of Splatoon 3, the latest installment of their multiplayer shooter series. Since then, beyond a few promotional images on the game’s official Twitter page, Nintendo has kept mostly silent about the game. Today, though, seemingly out of nowhere, Nintendo revealed that the game already has its confirmed release date.

Splatoon 3 will be releasing on the Nintendo Switch this summer on September 9, 2022. This announcement came with some in-game footage of the series’ signature Turf War mode. Unlike most online shooters, the goal of Splatoon is not to defeat other players (though this is still an option), but rather to cover as much of the arena in your team’s ink color before time runs out. The trailer showed some new ink weapons in action, as well as new movement and strategic mechanics for quickly getting around the arena.

In addition to the main multiplayer mode, Splatoon 3 will also feature a single-player campaign, though little gameplay footage of this mode has been released. Splatoon 2’s horde survival mode, Salmon Run, will also be making a return in Splatoon 3. To help bridge the gap between now and September, Nintendo has added the DLC for Splatoon 2, the Octo Expansion, to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, allowing any Expansion Pack subscribers to access the extra content for free.

Interestingly, earlier this week, Nintendo revealed that another of their upcoming sequels, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, is having its release date moved up from September to July. As Splatoon 3 was originally believed to be releasing in the middle of the summer, some fans have theorized that Nintendo swapped the release dates of these two games as a sort of soft delay for Splatoon 3.