On October 9th, Nintendo made a post on X about sign-ups for some kind of Playtest Program. They didn't go into specifics, but just said that people with an NSO+EP subscription could apply. The floodgates opened at 11am the next morning, and within nanoseconds all 10,000 spots got filled. Those that got in were told to check back on the 20th (PDT) for a download code.
On the 21st at around 2am EST (so still the 20th PDT I guess!) application download codes became available. The software could be launched, but was met with an error when it couldn't connect to its servers. There was an intriguing background for a few seconds while the errors repeated themselves.
Nintendo also launched the Playtest Program website, which had a bit of insight that seems to guide players to what they should focus on early on. From the information, it looked like it was going to be this experimental MMO-like PlayStation Home-esque ordeal. There's this big, wide world, and you will get a portion of it to place things within it, and eventually everyone will have filled the whole world up. We still don't know if this is just some random world, or if it's actually Earth with a GPS-like feature.
Later that morning, the application had been data mined, and a ton of information leaked online. You can find a good majority of things about it via "sky :3" on Bluesky. We're talking music, models, descriptions, and the like. Seems like it's going to be a fun little experiment! Just look at these little guys...
Anyway, the test servers go up on October 23rd around 9pm EST, so we won't have any real hands-on experiences until then. I actually got in, so I'll be checking this out and will be happy to report back here if anyone's interested to hear about it, despite Nintendo's pleas to keep it to myself.