According to The Polygon, Nintendo is setting up many public hotspots to allow streetpassing to people all over the country. Even at different times.

Nintendo is building a system of server relays to allow 3DS owners living in North America and Europe to use the handheld's StreetPass functionality with greater frequency, Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata announced today during an E3 investor's presentation.

"StreetPass is very common in crowded Japan," Iwata said. "In contrast, our American and European users seem to meet each other via StreetPass less frequently, and as a result, we have not seen a significant rise in the number of people who carry their Nintendo 3DS systems in Sleep Mode. When compared with our Japanese users, it seems that fewer people are experiencing the StreetPass feature on a daily basis."

To remedy that, Nintendo will launch a system update by this fall which introduces an online network, in which 3DS owners will automatically pass StreetPass data to a central server, where it can be relayed to another 3DS owner who accesses a Wi-Fi access point at popular hubs like Starbucks and McDonald's, "among others." 28,000 of these access points already exist in the U.S., while 24,000 exist in Europe.

"This will involve taking a Nintendo 3DS system in Sleep Mode to an access point which will then connect automatically and send StreetPass data to a server," Iwata said. "At the same time, the Nintendo 3DS system also receives the StreetPass data of another user from the server. 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.

I'm so stoked they recognized people in NA and Europe have a much lower density of 3DSes. This seems like one of the most consumer friendly things Nintendo has ever done.

Fuck. Yes.

No lie, I took my 3DS to the Calgary comic con, and both days I passed >10 people at once. Shitting rainbows of joy, until I realised that some of these people had pass-counts in the hundreds. And lord, the puzzle pieces I saw... Again, I say, fuck.

There's no technical reason this needs to involve a relay station of course. They are trying to encourage the "out-and-about" nature of having a portable. Which is fair enough, I suppose to prevent "grinding", but still it's probably just a matter of time before people can rig up a way to spoof it.

What about that whole "Sorry about lowering the 3DS price, here are some free games" thing early in the system's life?

That event is literally why I said "one of the most". I came very close to writing "second most", but I hedged my bets because I might be forgetting something.

@brackynews : I think if they did it over the internet directly, it would require so much throttling, they'd just be giving you a tiny fraction of the ones they could. As it is, I wonder how they will do it. I hope they remember who you passed with last so you can build levels in Find Mii. Realistically, they could do things like fill in all your regions in a day, but I doubt that will happen.

I donno that kinda takes away from the specialness of a streetpass. I mean if your not passing by the actual people what's even the point.

E: just realized this is from 1 month ago

Maybe I can actually use this now.

I heard they were doing something like this. Super glad they're going through with it, now I might actually take my 3DS places other than gamestop.

Yah, one of the cool parts of PAX EAST was taking a break every hour to find a seat, and pull out my 3ds and see who, and from where, I street passed. Also all the dumb wordpress sites people wanted me to visit.

Its one of the reasons I didnt even bring my VIta the second day, because there was no point. Because it did it over wifi, i coould just see who was [near]** me in my hotel, the one next to the candy factory.

I took my 3ds to the bonnaroo music fest here in Tennessee, and out of tens of thousands of people, not one street pass.I'm glad to see this little change.