3DS System Update And Thousands Of Relay Stations To Boost StreetPass Hits In Europe And North America

Nintendo is setting up thousands of StreetPass relay stations across the United States and Europe, which could help boost the 3DS's StreetPass function, and players to get more Mii's coming in their plaza.

Nintendo is currently targeting to convert 28,000 access points in the US and 24,000 in Europe. A 3DS system update will provide a framework for this idea to work. With this function in place, players don't have to pass by other players on the street while putting their units in sleep mode.

During the Nintendo's E3 Analyst Briefing, Iwata said:

"This year we will release software that opens doors for new ways to play through the StreetPass feature, such as Animal Crossing: New Leaf and I hope that more people around the world will be able to experience the benefits that StreetPass provides.

We will achieve that by taking advantage of Wi-Fi access points and implementing a StreetPass relay feature into the Nintendo 3DS hardware. Starbucks and McDonald's, among others, provide about 28,000 Wi-Fi access points, which are connected automatically to Nintendo 3DS, in the U.S. and 24,000 in Europe.

We are going to perform a system update that introduces a framework that uses these access points as StreetPass relay stations by this autumn.
In this setting, data is not exchanged directly, but rather through a StreetPass relay station. Hence, as opposed to, say, Person A and Person B directly exchanging game data, data will be transmitted in sequence from Person A to Person B, and then onto Person C and so on.

Previously the StreetPass feature required multiple Nintendo 3DS systems in Sleep Mode to be in the same location at the same time, but in this framework, you can exchange data with others by visiting the same location even at a different time, so we can certainly expect the use rate of the StreetPass feature to grow significantly."

StreetPass is a popular thing in Japan, but has not taken off as much in other countries. It's a good thing that Nintendo is doing a lot of fan service such as this.

Source: officialnintendomagazine.co.uk