Winners and Losers: Sony Access controller gets pre-order date as Reddit scraps awards

OPINION: It’s time for us to name this week’s winner and loser and a few launches grabbed our attention this week. 

Namely, the Honor Magic V2 and the Nothing Phone (2), both of which caught our eye with their unique designs. The Nothing Phone (2) sees an updated Glyph system and transparent back this time around, while the Honor has been revamped in a way that could potentially overshadow the incoming Galaxy Z Fold 5 – especially seeing as the latter is rumoured to be getting a price hike this time around. 

Of course, you’d be forgiven for skipping over the above with Amazon’s Prime Day sale having stolen much of our attention this past week as the retailer dropped deal after deal. 

Keep reading to discover who we named our winner and loser this week. 

Winner: Sony 

Our winner this week is Sony after the company officially announced a pre-order date for its new Access controller for the PlayStation 5. 

The Access controller – previously known as Project Leonardo – is a PS5 controller designed to help players with disabilities and accessibility needs game more comfortably for longer periods of time. 

The controller has a modular design that allows users to customise the layout with different buttons and stick caps in various shapes and designs. Users can use the controller from any 360-degree orientation and connect third-party accessories using the four 3.5mm expansion ports. 

Buttons can be mapped to create up to 30 control profiles, stick settings can be adjusted, commands can be toggled on and off and buttons can be disabled altogether to prevent them from accidentally being pressed. 

The PS5 Access controller can also be paired with another Access controller or a DualSense controller to be used together collaboratively. 

The Access controller will be available for pre-order from July 21 and start shipping worldwide from December 6. The controller is priced at $89.99/£79.99/€89.99. 

Loser: Reddit 

This week’s loser is Reddit after the platform announced that it would be ditching its Gold coin and award system. 

According to a post by u/venkman01 of the Reddit product team, Reddit is reworking the way in which content and contributions are rewarded on the website. Part of this process involves getting rid of existing coins and awards, including community coins for moderators, medals, premium awards and community awards. 

The post explains that Reddit has received consistent feedback on awards indicating that many users don’t like the clutter from awards or the steps that go into awarding content. 

All existing coins and awards will remain available until September 12, but users are no longer able to purchase new coins. 

As you might expect, Reddit has already received quite a bit of backlash in the comments of the post. User u/perryw commented, “You’re just taking coins, that we’ve paid cash for, with no consideration? Not even going to give us the equivalent value in premium time for our existing coins and coins we are going to end up not getting?”. 

“In other words, you’re removing a popular feature and charging the same amount for premium”, wrote u/sabertooth767. 

Some key perks of Reddit Premium were the 700 monthly coins, 1000 sign-up coins and Premium Awards users received as part of the $5.99/month subscription. 

Though Reddit Gold, Silver, Platinum, Ternium and Argentium will be ending as we know them, the post does promise that “something golden” will remain a core part of the platform.