3DS supports some level of stats on your friends including what game they're playing, IIRC.
Do you have any idea of how far online gaming has evolved when it comes to consoles? Heck, even with platforms like Steam. We have real-time chat, no matter what game we're playing. We can send each other messages which can be seen anytime, not just through the main menus. We know which games have been finished and which ones haven't, out of all our contacts. You wanna play with someone? Give'em your gamertag, or PSN ID. Contact people with similar interests as you, and choose different difficulty areas. Have heavily involved matchmaking and complex multiplayer lobbies. Launch another completely different game while you're playing something else, by simply accepting another person's multiplayer invite. And this is just the cherry on top of the hundred-layer cake that online multiplayer is, both on XBox Live or PSN.
And as a latecomer to PSN I must disagree with the notion that identifying one's account via random code is without merit. Because see, if you identify by username, it means that if ANYONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE FREAKING WORLD had the same idea as you, ever, you have to either pick something else or attach random [parasitic bomb] to the end. I hate that. I'd rather the system identify me by a random number and my name appear to players as whatever the hell I want, regardless of originality.
Hahahahaha! So, for the sake of keeping your favoured identity because you can't think of something original, you forego easy access to everyone and choose to let other players you know reach you through one of the worst net identity ideas I've ever seen, as if you're keeping some kind of long phone number you can be contacted with.
"Oh man, you play Halo? Awesome! My Gamertag is DrGamma, look for me there."
"Oh man, you play Mario Kart? Great! We should... play online sometime. I'll just... give you my e-mail, so we can log in and trade numbers, because I don't carry mine with me. But we'll meet up! Sometime..."
Gamertags and PSN IDs make it so trading identities is like trading e-mails. You're foregoing pretty much everything just for the sake of still having your own name to be identified by in matches. Matches with people you know, because obviously people you don't know will see a code or some [parasitic bomb].
One man's paint is another's [parasitic bomb], it seems. Because to me, leaderboards, mean nothing. I see no value to them whatsoever and I in no way believe that Mario Kart, Mega Man, or any other such game is better for them. The taunts provide some manner of personality. Leaderboards just show who has the most time to kill. To me, the earlier is a far superior aspect of "identity" than the latter.
Nintendo's got a lot about their online setup that they could stand to fix, but stat-tracking some anonymous weirdos on the internet isn't one that interests me personally. It never did. If I want to know how awesome my friends are, I'll ask. And if I don't know who they are, then I don't really give a damn. And even if for the sake of argument I did, that's why we have YouTube.
That reminds me of that Aesop. Fox and the Grapes.
http://static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/12397582858650.pngYou don't like a feature. That's cool. What the [tornado fang] does that have to do with our present argument? Nothing whatsoever. Nintendo's online setup is still [parasitic bomb]. And Leaderboards and social options are worshipped by alot of online players.
There's no snaking in Wii. That's why we have, and despise, bikes. 
Because snaking makes the game SO MUCH FUN.
Bikes rule.