22nd June 2013, 4:53 PM
I just picked up New Leaf, and it is all the fun of Animal Crossing I could want, only now I'm the MAYOR. (Accidentally...)
Nintendo is doing some sort of promotion deal involving the 3DS "Nintendo Zone". The "Nintendo Zone" is supposed to be a special set of content only available at specific stores hosting the zone. However the Nintenzone is rather silly. ALL the content of the Nintenzone is hosted on Nintendo's servers, NOT locally at any stores, so really there is no reason at all that I should need to head outside to access a frickin' WEBSITE. (It's one of those little things that says "okay, Nintendo sometimes doesn't really "get" the internet.) It runs deeper though, because of how Nintendo actually "checks" to see if you are accessing the site from an approved store or not. No, there's no special signature the store's wifi is sending to Nintendo, the check is done ENTIRELY on the 3DS itself. The 3DS only checks one thing: the name of the SSID. THAT is the "security mechanism". Simply put, if you name your own SSID to one of the preapproved ones the 3DS checks for, then the 3DS will conclude you're linked to the Nintenzone. That... that doesn't even count as a security mechanism.
http://www.nintendo.com/3ds/nintendozone
So all I did was set my phone as a tethered hotspot named "attwifi" and bam, I was in the Nintenzone. ... And there wasn't really anything there. Same ol' demos and stuff I could get through the eShop.
However, for this promotion, you have to name your SSID to "Bestbuy". Do that, and when you play Animal Crossing and go to the post office, you'll be able to get the various timed exclusive items. Well, my tolerance for timed exclusive items is basically nonexistent at this point, so I really didn't care for this at all. I'll work around this because it's such a small amount of effort that it makes it worth it to get the stuff, but there's no way I'd travel all the way out to a Best Buy on the off chance their wifi setup is actually working just to get one of these items. This is the sort of thing Nintendo needs to stop doing. I'm happy to congregate at one spot for something like a tournament, but not for promotional exclusives based around artificial scarcity.
Also, the Nintendo Zone just made me think of this:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7_OjvJZhEf8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Nintendo is doing some sort of promotion deal involving the 3DS "Nintendo Zone". The "Nintendo Zone" is supposed to be a special set of content only available at specific stores hosting the zone. However the Nintenzone is rather silly. ALL the content of the Nintenzone is hosted on Nintendo's servers, NOT locally at any stores, so really there is no reason at all that I should need to head outside to access a frickin' WEBSITE. (It's one of those little things that says "okay, Nintendo sometimes doesn't really "get" the internet.) It runs deeper though, because of how Nintendo actually "checks" to see if you are accessing the site from an approved store or not. No, there's no special signature the store's wifi is sending to Nintendo, the check is done ENTIRELY on the 3DS itself. The 3DS only checks one thing: the name of the SSID. THAT is the "security mechanism". Simply put, if you name your own SSID to one of the preapproved ones the 3DS checks for, then the 3DS will conclude you're linked to the Nintenzone. That... that doesn't even count as a security mechanism.
http://www.nintendo.com/3ds/nintendozone
So all I did was set my phone as a tethered hotspot named "attwifi" and bam, I was in the Nintenzone. ... And there wasn't really anything there. Same ol' demos and stuff I could get through the eShop.
However, for this promotion, you have to name your SSID to "Bestbuy". Do that, and when you play Animal Crossing and go to the post office, you'll be able to get the various timed exclusive items. Well, my tolerance for timed exclusive items is basically nonexistent at this point, so I really didn't care for this at all. I'll work around this because it's such a small amount of effort that it makes it worth it to get the stuff, but there's no way I'd travel all the way out to a Best Buy on the off chance their wifi setup is actually working just to get one of these items. This is the sort of thing Nintendo needs to stop doing. I'm happy to congregate at one spot for something like a tournament, but not for promotional exclusives based around artificial scarcity.
Also, the Nintendo Zone just made me think of this:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7_OjvJZhEf8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>