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Japan: StreetPass Relay service to be discontinued next month

As the Nintendo has already entered its 8th year on the market in Japan, Nintendo announced today that one its services would be shut down next month, on March 28th at 10AM JST. That service is none other than StreetPass Relay, which was first launched in August 2013, and allows players to get StreetPass hits from participating Hotspots (at McDonalds for example).

This service was a great way for players who lived in an area without many active Nintendo 3DS players to get StreetPass hits, via the internet. You could even create your very own StreetPass Relay hotspot at home by setting up an access point in a certain way (a quick search on your favourite search engine will allow you to find guides).

Unfortunately, next month, this service will be discontinued in Japan. Nintendo doesn’t really specify why the service is to be shut down, but as mentioned above, the Nintendo 3DS has already entered its 8th year on the market. With the Nintendo Switch now available for almost a year, there most likely isn’t enough active Nintendo 3DS users (that actually use StreetPass Relay) to justify the costs of running this service.

Of course, StreetPass itself isn’t going anywhere: all compatible games and related features will keep working normally, you will simply need to meet other players directly instead of going through StreetPass Relay. After all, there really isn’t a reason for Nintendo to deactivate StreetPass: absolutely no data goes through a web server.

Source: Nintendo

Lite_Agent

Founder and main writer for Perfectly Nintendo. Tried really hard to find something funny and witty to put here, but had to admit defeat.

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