3DS Mii Plaza Will Get Update by End of 2011

Video game publisher and hardware developer Nintendo has announced that the Mii Plaza and StreetPass elements of the 3DS handheld will get updates before the end of the year, allowing users to get more value out of the services.

The announcement was made by Satoru Iwata, who is the president of Nintendo, and is part of a bigger strategy from the company that is designed to boost the interest in its newest hardware launch.

The update will allow players to use their Mii avatars in new ways, although the company has not said exactly what it plans.

The Mii Plaza is a kind of central hub for mini-games that are using the Mii figures and the information that the Nintendo 3DS collects from other devices via the StreetPass feature.

Gamers can have 300 Mii avatars collected and can choose to use them as characters for their own games, but at the moment the experiences offered seem to not be attractive enough for most of those who have bought the 3DS.

It's not clear when the updates to the Mii Plaza and the StreetPass are launched.

Nintendo has announced worse than expected results for the first fiscal quarter of the year and blamed the overall slowdown on the launch of the Nintendo 3DS, which failed to perform according to schedule.

The platform moved less than 1 million units since it was launched and Nintendo initially announced that 16 million of them were expected to be sold during 2011.

To make the 3DS more attractive Nintendo is slashing the price of the device to 169 dollars, which is quite significant considering that it was launched less than six months ago, and also plans to launch more software for it before the end of the year.

Those who have already bought the device are also set to get access to a number of free games.