It’s Easter Sunday, which means it’s time for an egg-citing edition of Trusted Reviews’ Winners and Losers.
Keep reading to discover who our winner was this week, along with who came out looking worse for wear in the first week of April.
Winner: Nintendo Switch fans
Our winners this week are all of the Nintendo Switch gamers in the UK who have been struggling with Joy-Con drift (and haven’t already shelled out on a replacement).
This is because Nintendo UK has updated its support page with the promise that any Switch controllers suffering from Joy-Con drift can now be fixed at the company’s repair centres completely free.
The term “Joy-Con drift” is commonly used to describe a Switch controller fault that causes the console to register an input on either or the joysticks despite the user not having touched the controller or analogue sticks. Traditionally, the error has prompted users to dish out around £70 on a set of Joy-Cons or fight their way through Nintendo’s support process and try to secure a repair or replacement for free.
In fact, Joy-Con drift has perhaps been the most prominent issue to plague the console since its launch in 2017.
Nintendo had previously offered free repairs and replacements to 79% of customers who reported the issue, but around 19% were left to foot the bill themselves.
These stats are according to an investigation by Which? that looked into the cause of Joy-Con drift last year. The consumer champion found that the Switch issue was likely due to a mechanical fault in the design and called upon Nintendo to offer no-cost support or compensation to gamers dealing with the problem.
Nintendo has already been offering free repairs for controllers dealing with Joy-Con drift in North America, Latin America and France, but now the company will provide no-charge repairs for controllers purchased in the EEA, UK or Switzerland, too.
Loser: Spotify
This week’s loser is Spotify after the music streaming service put the final nail in the coffin for its live radio app, Spotify Live.
Spotify Live initially launched in 2021 under the name “Spotify Greenroom” as Spotify’s answer to the growing trend toward live audio on social media that began when Clubhouse rocketed to the top of app stores earlier that year.
Spotify was able to hop on the trend relatively early after acquiring Betty Labs, the company behind sports-focussed live audio app Locker Room.
“Creators and fans have been asking for live formats on Spotify, and we’re excited that soon, we’ll make them available to hundreds of millions of listeners and millions of creators on our platform”, said Spotify’s Chief Research & Development Officer Gustav Söderström at the time.
“The world already turns to us for music, podcasts, and other unique audio experiences, and this new live audio experience is a powerful complement that will enhance and extend the on-demand experience we provide today”.
Of course, Spotify Live didn’t quite end up being the ground-breaking new app that the company anticipated, with Spotify recently confirming to Gizmodo that “it no longer makes sense” to host these live fan-creator interactions in a standalone app.
Spotify Live will officially shut down on April 30, so you have a couple of weeks left to check it out if you’re at all interested in what Spotify’s live audio feature had to offer.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
