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3DS

StreetPass Premium Is A Solution Looking For A Problem

by Donald Theriault - April 21, 2015, 3:43 am EDT
Total comments: 9

Not recommended, even for Kairon.

Nintendo has done a good job so far with providing value with their downloadable expansions for software. The Mario Kart and Hyrule Warriors DLC packs are filled with good content (depending on your threshold for Tingle and Baby Park). Then there's the recent update for the StreetPass Mii Plaza, which adds a few extra bits of customization but also adds an upsell for the new StreetPass Premium service. The premium service really only has one feature worth your money, but that’s not enough to warrant the $4.99 price tag (or $6.29 one in Canada).

The most prominent added features are the three on the main menu. You can save up to 100 Miis in a VIP Room, which might be nice if you want to preserve the likes of Abe Lincoln or Reggie for posterity, but those special Miis come out often enough – especially for the Nintendo executives – that they're not going to get scrolled out of the plaza unless you go to PAX every weekend. You can't even call them up in StreetPass games on demand. Admittedly, that would break the games if you did it with the special Miis, but at least it would justify VIP storage.

For Premium members, the music player in the StreetPass Mii Plaza features additional support for listening to music with the system closed. Unless you really love yourself some StreetPass Plaza music, you won't use this feature at all; if I'm going to boot a 3DS game to listen to music, I'll be firing up Theatrhythm Curtain Call and blasting some quality Chrono Trigger music.

The final major feature is the addition of birthday tracking for Miis, which is tied to a round of plaza tickets. If you're obsessed with collecting all of the hats and newly added speech balloons, you'll have to buy Premium to get them all. Sorry about that. The Miis have always recorded the birthdays, so it's nice to see a use for it, but tying tickets to it to force the obsessives to buy it is not cool.

Ironically, the most useful features for the StreetPass aficionado aren't in the main menu at all, but hidden away in the settings menu. The ability to disable your choice of things during the StreetPass conversation is useful if you're rapid-firing at a convention, for instance. Although I personally wouldn't turn off the game intros unless I found 10 people in a row playing 3D Classics Urban Champion. It's a shame that this part's locked behind a wall of useless stuff.

Would I have paid for these features in the collective? Maybe a buck for conversation skipping, but certainly not a fiver. Could the rest of the “additions” have been left out and the conversation settings included with the Battleground Z and Ultimate Angler update? That would have been the ideal solution, since as it stands right now it seems Nintendo is trying to get people to pay to stop menu nagging. And that's never a good thing.

What would have been worth it for five bucks? The biggest thing is expanded storage for Miis. Ideally, we'd have no limits on the number of Miis that can be at the gate at one time – the games would have a 10-at-a-time restriction, but the plaza itself could have unlimited. The other big thing I want and may pay for involves the two empty slots on the game list – early access to future StreetPass games. If they came out on a Thursday again, Premium members would get it on Monday. In combination, that's an attractive feature set for five bucks.

Talkback

AdrockApril 21, 2015

Agreed for the most part. Considering how great Nintendo has been with DLC, I thought it was above this. While not as silly as "Easy Fatalities," the offered features here tread that line without crossing it.

Ultimately, I'll pass on Premium (though no more menu nagging would have been swell) and the new games. I don't get too any StreetPasses, don't go out of my way, and at this point, I'm mostly bored with the StreetPass games. I have all the hats I really want. I had my fun with it and I don't regret the $16 I spent. However, I only really run through them now because I still like collecting the puzzle pieces and I already opened the plaza. I've been spending Play Coins on Super Smash Bros. trophies.

KITT 10KApril 21, 2015

I like the addion to these new games and features I really like the vault feature. It's where you can take a game off the game menu and basically turn it off including the notifications. So I am so glad I was able to take Flower Town off the game menu and put it into the vault, (I hate that game)! I know can restore it anytime, but (for the extended foreseeable future) I have no intention of restoring it.

UncleBobRichard Cook, Guest ContributorApril 21, 2015

Yeah.  SPP is *not* worth the $5 upgrade (in spite of the fact I did it.  four times.)

Dear Nintendo - add these in, would ya?

More maps:  Why are there countries without maps?  Why are there weird countries I've never heard of and no global map to show me where they're at?  Every country should have a map with a globe showing me where the country is - I'm American, damnit.  I don't know geography.

Fix the ten limit.  Skylanders Trap Team did an amazing job with this.  The limit is 99.  However, you can only 'import' ten of those at a time.  Let me do the same thing with StreetPass Plaza.  I hate geting 10 StreetPasses when I go out - because that means I may have missed other StreetPasses.  This is made worse by the fact if I go through a Nintendo Zone or two (say, a mall or such) - fake StreetPasses could fill up my queue and I could be missing out on real StreetPasses.  Boo!

Tell me what *kind* of StreetPass I just got.  It tells me if the Mii is "invited" from another game, but it'd be nice if you could tell me if that StreetPass is a fake Nintendo Zone one vs. a real, actual StreetPass.  Combine this with things like International StreetPass week - did I *really* pass someone from Germany, or was that from a Nintendo Zone?  I don't know.

Give me pink pieces!  All premium users are guaranteed a pink starting piece when new puzzles come out.  Ideally, those who pay for premium are those who StreetPass a lot - so use them to spread the pink wealth.

Art_de_CatApril 21, 2015

I admit to having buyer's remorse on the VIP.  At least the new games are kinda worth playing. But sometimes that OCD gets the better of me.........Puzzle Swap is my main enjoyment of it.  Reducing conversations will be good if you are trying to go a lot of relays. I have quite a few I can do in a short loop in town. 


BTW, I ran into a Uncle Bob and wondered if it was the guy from this site.
More later.

UncleBobRichard Cook, Guest ContributorApril 21, 2015

Odds are good.  My Mii was spread across the globe quite a bit this past weekend. ;)

As long as your "last played" wasn't a Tingle game, I probably missed you as well.

And yes, I'm aware of the irony given my last played was a game that isn't even out yet.

UncleBobRichard Cook, Guest ContributorApril 21, 2015

Actually...  My last-played were some Tingle games awhile ago.  It's possible you hit an older version of me (older version of Mii?) via the Nintendo Zone crazy.

I was referring more to what happened when you last went to Symphony of the Goddess.

For the record, I thought about this for 5 minutes. Then bought it.

... but it took me five minutes!

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