That's cool, I've never been able to get any of the McDonalds features to work on my 3DS so hopefully this will do the trick (since I frequently take my 3DS to McDonalds to give me something to do while my kids play in the play place)

I hope these have a larger range then the 3DS does.  That could be a neat solution for the Streetpass space problem outside of Japan and really dense population areas.

The problem is that it still requires others with StreetPass to go to the specific McDonalds and Starbucks locations. If you live in a rural area, you might get a few more StreetPasses, but it depends how many people go to that location.

Well, if this means I'll finally be able to get all the pink pieces I'm missing in the Spotpass puzzles, that's cool I guess. I think in the long-term Nintendo probably would have been better off just beefing up Spotpass so 3DS system friends can just Streetpass with each other online, though (much like the Vita's badly-explained Near feature).  As we all saw this week, that functionality IS there. Nintendo just refuses to use it outside of special events.

All you need is 10 to go and each pass would be a max pass pull.  In fact Nintendo could even seed each point with 2 or 3 so it can get to the rotating 10 faster.

What happens when you get all 10 of those though? Will you be able to get a person a 2nd time or do they need to go to that location again?

Unless the system takes your Streetpass.  Checks what you've gotten. Then denies you.  I would think yes.  KISS principle would state that the relay would just blindly store your stuff and pick a random 10 to give you.

This is super cool... but does take away some of the charm of StreetPass.  I was thrilled last week when I actually got a real, live, StreetPass from someone from Japan.  Knowing that the person was in the same area as I was is kinda neat.  Knowing that someone visited a McDonald's at some point in the past some random amount of time... meh.

Wonder if one will be able to use the Nintendo Zone work-around in some way to create their own StreetPass relays. :D

When I first heard this I thought that the update would just use spotpass in general as a way to distribute street passes. Not so. It is more restrictive than that.
It's still neat but not quite the explosion I thought it was going to be.

Was kind of excited about this - getting a StreetPass is rare enough here that the idea sounds great, but the locations where Nintendo Zone hotspots are supposed to exist locally never work.  So probably this announcement won't have any effect on my lack of StreetPassing.  Keeping my fingers crossed though: being able to make some headway on those 80+ pink puzzle pieces that are still missing would be a real treat.

Please put these into Montana stores!

Sounds great, I've had a 3DS since launch and have 11 streetpasses.  Lately I've been streetpassing a guy at work, so I'm actually making progress in street pass features aside from the day I spent 4 hours and 2000+ play coins.

Adam Orth is hired by Nintendo.
Adam Orth responds to TeaHee by asking why he would want to live in Montana?
Adam Orth updates his resume again.

2,000 coins in one day? LOL, that is impressive since you can only get 10 per day (so 2,000 is like 6 1/2 months worth of coins).

McDonalds and Starbucks? Two places I never journey into. Now I need to find a reason. Food or drink certainly aren't options at either.

Come on Nintendo, pick healthy places!

You can use the bathrooms at those places. McDonalds also sells water.

You don't even need buy the water. Ask for a water cup and they will give you a small cup for water. I usually get a caesar salad (without the dressing) and a water cup for my lunch. I'd say that's pretty healthy.

I am wondering if this feature will ever make it to México or Latin America.