When I got a Switch I was looking forward to those fun quirky menus Nintendo is known for. Imagine my disappointment when I turned it on for the first time.

they noticed they already have a captive audience and none of that will make them more money.

so they are now trying to squeeze pennies out of the pirates and the hobbiysts having fun with their ip.

The times it did work, it was kinda neat.

I remember how exciting it was to go to a comic convention and suddenly Animal Crossing and my Fire Emblem game popped up with prizes. It wasn't revolutionary, but it was neat!

Then leaving, rode the airplane, through the train... Silence. It never lit up again.

They mastered it with the 3DS, I remember seeing many DS games supporting features very similar to it, some that comes to my head are TWEWY and Metroid Prime Hunters.

Thanks. Looks like an interesting adaptation.

Similar concepts (i.e. connect to random strangers' devices when in close physical proximity, and trade mini profiles/trading tokens/whatever) have been done at least half a dozen times, both before and after Nintendo, but somehow they never seem to stick. Street Pass may have been the most successful iteration that I'm aware of. I think that it's hard to get critical mass. Users are excited at first when they set things up, but after a few days or weeks of not getting any hits, they tend to lose interest and turn the service off to save battery life.

It was never implemented in PoGo, was it? Because that's where it very clearly should have gotten a spiritual successor.

Not that I'm playing that anymore, with its predatory scheme. Orna all the way, now.

https://pretendo.network/

pretty cool, but I feel like it would be unlikely to meet anyone else on Pretendo's Streetpass? Or maybe Streetpass was entirely peer to peer anyways?

From what I understand they are all partners. I've had a couple respond to my comments. I hope it's not stolen.