The PlayStation 5âs Accolades feature has allowed users to offer awards to fellow players in multiplayer games, the idea being itâd help foment kindness and camaraderie in the gaming community. But Sony formally retired it from PS5 this week for one reason: No one used it. Most people (hi) didnât even seem to know it existed.
This spurred a thought exercise: What other gaming consoles still have useless features? Take the Switch, for instance. Sure, Nintendoâs hybrid handheld has plenty of quietly helpful little tricks, like its universal zoom function. But it also has some that could probably get purged without anyone caringâor even noticing.
The âFind Controllersâ Function
Of the slew of options in the Switchâs âControllersâ menu, the âfind controllersâ function far and away collects the most dust. Open it, and youâll see a menu containing a list of Joy-Cons paired to your console. Hold down the âAâ button over the Joy-Con youâre looking for and itâll rumble. Quietly. At, like, animal-hearing frequency. Itâs intended to help you locate any detached Joy-Cons that may be misplaced, but isnât really effective enough to do its one jobâNever mind that you actually need at least one Joy-Con on hand to use it in the first place.
Sadly, thereâs no console function that addresses the scourge of Joy-Con drift
The âNewsâ App
Most of the seven permanent icons on the Switchâs home screen are genuinely useful shortcuts to submenus. One, however, is used only by the people who accidentally click on it: the âNewsâ app. Open it up and youâll see a reverse chronological feed of digitized press releases from the annals of Nintendoâs marketing machine. (You can also see the three most recent âstoriesâ on the left bar of the screen when you boot up the console.) But if youâre looking for gaming news, youâre not going to read it on a gaming consoleâwhich youâve presumably booted up to, yâknow, play games. Youâre especially not going to read it on that console if the text is so very tiny. Youâre far more likely to get your news from a favorite gaming site
Voice Chat
Despite what you may have heard, yep, the Switch has voice chat! Kinda. Itâs a convoluted mess. On PlayStation and Xbox, if you want to get voice chat going, youâŚplug in a headset and get voice chat going. On Switch, however, you have to go through a multi-step process and boot up a companion smartphone app. Nintendo could scrap its voice chat without anyone caring. Really, if youâre using a smartphone app to talk to your party members, Discord is right there
Keyboard Support
Everyone hates punching in a password (twice!) to buy something on Nintendoâs eShop, what with the consoleâs small touchscreen keyboard. This workaround doesnât function in handheld mode, but you can plug a USB keyboard into the dock and use that to type instead. But also: the time it takes to pull out a keyboard and plug it into the Switchâs dock probably takes longer than whatever task you were initially trying to circumvent. (If you must get into the eShop faster, just deactivate the password requirement.) Nintendo could likely lose keyboard support without much uproar.
Screen Lock (or, well, that itâs an option)
Yes, the Switchâs screen lock feature is indeed enormously helpful, dare I say essential. Turn it on, and youâll give your console a purgatory of sorts between its waking and sleeping states. Youâll then need to tap the same button three times to use your console, which can prevent it from inadvertently turning on when, say, itâs rustling around in your bag. Honestly, it shouldnât even be an option: It should be the standard. Get rid of the choice, I say, and let screen lock be the standard.
Dark Mode
Iâm kidding! Iâm kidding. But hey, on this note, wouldnât it be nice if the Switch had more color themes for its backdrop? Hello? Hey, whereâd you go?
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