Sony is already retiring this PS5 launch feature
Awards no more
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Sonywill discontinue the PS5’s Accolades feature later this year, as the system received less usage than the tech giant expected.
ThePS5community awards feature lets players commend fellow gamers for helpful and generous actions. But Sony says Accolades hasn’t received the engagement it had hoped for.
“In fall of 2022 [that’s spring in the Southern Hemisphere], the Accolades feature on PlayStation 5 will no longer be supported,” aPlayStation support pagespotted byPush Squarereads. “The feature hasn’t seen the level of usage we anticipated, so we are refocusing our efforts. We encourage the community to continue to send positive messages to one another.”
Rewards, not awards
The Accolades feature was originally introduced to let players show their appreciation of one another. After completing an online match, players can pick a fellow gamer to award with one of three accolades: Helpful, Welcoming, or Good Sport. The idea is to recognize generous players while encouraging greater positivity among multiplayer communities.
The system is fairly robust, too. You can only give accolades to players who aren’t on your friends list, and can’t send an accolade to the same player more than once within 12 hours. You can view any awards you’ve earned through your PSN profile.
But while the player-led rewards program will be sunset, a new system is on the horizon. Sony announced itsPS Stars loyalty programlast month, which will reward players for spending time on the PS5 andPS4. Through Stars, players earn points for playing specific games or earning particular trophies. Those points can then be transferred into digital collectibles and PS Store funds. The new program is expected to launch worldwide later this year.
Not that there isn’t already an abundance of emerging PS5 features. Sony only recently made one of itsbest features much easier to find, rolling out an update that let users engage auto low-latency mode from within the settings menu. Between that and the addition ofPS5 VRRearlier this year, Sony’s flagship console is looking beefier than ever.
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Callum is TechRadar Gaming’s News Writer. You’ll find him whipping up stories about all the latest happenings in the gaming world, as well as penning the odd feature and review. Before coming to TechRadar, he wrote freelance for various sites, including Clash, The Telegraph, and Gamesindustry.biz, and worked as a Staff Writer at Wargamer. Strategy games and RPGs are his bread and butter, but he’ll eat anything that spins a captivating narrative. He also loves tabletop games, and will happily chew your ear off about TTRPGs and board games.
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