New Nintendo Trademarks May Reveal New Name For 3DS Online Service

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Traditionally, Nintendo’s online platforms have been awful. Full stop. But now, it looks like there’s a change of attitudes at Nintendo as the 3DS will have a slightly better online strategy with this “always on” Tag thing they talked about at E3. Now, it may have a slightly better name – CrossPass.

The folks at Siliconera noticed Nintendo trademarking the following names in Japan – “CrossPass”, “CrossPass Mode”, “CrossPass Network” and “CrossPass Connection”. All of them sound like feasible names for Nintendo’s online network to us. For those who missed the big announcement, the 3DS will have sort of an always-on WiFi connection that will automatically network with other 3DS even if they’re playing a game.

Nintendo went on to trademark “3D Paddleball”, “3D Challenge” and “3D Hopper”, which all sound like 3D games to us. They also nabbed “Target Shooting” which was the augmented reality 3D shooting tech demo that was shown off to the press at E3. If they’re trademarking it, it could be coming to retail in some capacity.

Officially Nintendo says that the 3DS is coming next year, though some industry insiders think it’s coming this holiday season to compete with the Move and Kinect (although the chances of that happening seem less and less as the months drag on). The 3DS did garner mostly positive feedback from the press who tried it at E3. It even won the Judges’ “Game” Of The Year award for the 2010 E3.