The Nintendo Switch is one that most people forget about

The Accolades feature on PlayStation 5 It allowed users to give away prizes to fellow gamers in multiplayer games, the idea being that they would help spark kindness and camaraderie in the gaming community. But Sony has officially retired from PS5 This week for one reason: no one used it. It seems most people (hello) don’t even know it even exists.

This stimulated a thought exercise: What other game consoles still have useless features? Take the toggle switch, for example. Sure, the Nintendo portable hybrid has a lot to do Small tricks are quietly usefulSuch as global zoom function. But it also contains a few things that can probably be removed without anyone paying attention – or even noticing.

Function “search for controllers”

Of the plethora of options in the Switch’s Controllers menu, the Find Controllers function collects the most dust away. Open it, and you’ll see a list with a list of Joy-Cons associated with your console. Press and hold the “A” button above the Joy-Con you’re looking at and a rattling sound will sound. quietly. In, like, animal hearing frequency. It’s intended to help you locate any separate Joy-Con that might be misplaced, but it’s not really efficient enough to do its one job—don’t care that you actually need at least one Joy-Con on hand to use it in the first place.

Unfortunately, there is no console function that handles Scourge Joy-Con Drift.

News app

Most of the seven permanent icons on the Switch’s home screen are genuinely useful shortcuts to submenus. One, however, is used only by the people who accidentally click on it: the “News” app. Open it up and you’ll see a reverse chronological feed of digitized press releases from the annals of Nintendo’s marketing machine. (You can also see the three most recent “stories” on the left bar of the screen when you boot up the console.) But if you’re looking for gaming news, you’re not going to read it on a gaming console—which you’ve presumably booted up to, y’know, play games. You’re especially not going to read it on that console if the text is so very tiny. You’re far more likely to get your news from Favorite gaming site.

voice chat

Despite what you may have heard, yes, the Switch does have voice chat! Kinda. It’s a complicated mess. On PlayStation and Xbox, if you want to start voice chatting, you… plug in a headset and start voice chatting. On the Switch, however, you should Going through a multi-step process and run a companion smartphone app. Nintendo can cancel its voice chat without anyone caring about it. Really, if you use a smartphone app to talk to your party members, then Discord is it right there.

keyboard support

Everyone hates hitting a password (twice!) to buy something on Nintendo’s eShop, and what with the console’s tiny touch keyboard. This workaround does not work in manual mode, but you can plug a USB keyboard into the dock and use it to type instead. But also: the time it takes to pull out and plug the keyboard into the Switch dock is likely to take longer than whatever task you were initially trying to circumvent. (If you must get into the eShop faster, just deEnable password requirements.) Nintendo will likely lose keyboard support without much fanfare.

Screen lock (or, well, that’s an option)

Yes, the Switch’s lock screen feature is indeed quite useful, I dare say a must. Turn it on, and it will give your console a kind of doom between waking and sleeping states. You’ll then need to tap the same button three times to use your controller, which can prevent it from being triggered inadvertently when, say, you’re walking around in your bag. Frankly, it should not be an option: it should be the norm. Ditch the option, I say, and make screen lock the standard.

dark mode

I’m kidding! I’m kidding. But hey, on that note, wouldn’t it be nice if the Switch had more color themes for its background? Welcome? Hello, where are you going?