Naturally, much like some horrible disease, you can’t get rid of them.
And you thought the dystopic cyberpunk future would let you have Wolverine claws. But no, it’s ads all the way down, at least on your PS5 homescreen.
Yes, not only are you possessed of only One Game (Astro Bot), but you have to endure having the beautiful splashscreen of game art irreparably replaced with shitty ads that you can’t remove. Worse, as in addition to the memed lack of games, the PS5 also lacks themes like its predecessor had.
Please forgive me, as I don’t have a PS5 and must rely on IGN’s screenshots.
Their first example: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, which has had the artwork of the game protagonist Titus replaced with the thumbnail of a promotional video for the game by publisher Focus Entertainment.
Black Myth Wukong? Patch notes for the game
Call of Duty, on the other hand promotes its season 6 update, The Haunting.
If that was where it ended, that would be… well, still bad. But it actually gets worse, because it gets more confusing. MP1st highlighted what this has done for Horizon Zero Dawn; it has replaced the game’s art with an ad for the upcoming LEGO Horizon Adventures, leading to a moment of confusion as to just what game you’re about to play.
Ah, but the crown jewel of these may just be the ad Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales got. Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse COMING SOON only in theaters. That’s right! An ad for a movie that came out June 2023!
And we can’t forget dear Ratboy NBA 2K25, which is advertising its month-old early access for a game that is already out. Fantastic.
It is worth noting that not all games are affected by this. The aforementioned Astro Bot is ad-free, as is Yakuza Kiwami 2, which is surprising considering the upcoming Amazon Prime series.
This isn’t the first time the dashboards of consoles have had ads, though. it’s just that, previously, those ads were contained by the store or a What’s New section on the dash, rather than under every single game.
Most seem to believe that this is the result of a recent firmware update (a reasonable guess), though the patch notes mention nothing of the sort. Needless to say, no one’s a fan of this change.
Over on Reddit, the brain trust of the internet, redditors are also not happy with this bold new ad strategy.
There definitely should be a way to disable this. I get its usefulness in modern games that are still getting updated but since it just displays the newest “news” item it’s a lot more problematic with older titles. It just ends up covering your screen with irrelevant information that’s potentially a decade out of date
mikelman999
I just noticed this the other day after starting TLOU Part 1. After a couple of hours playing it, I backed out to the dashboard and I see Neil Druckman and the cast of the TV show as the background when hovering over the game and was very confused.
ConcreteSnake
I checked my other games and they had it as well and most of the background images have changed to these shitty thumbnails from the news and covers up the unique art that made each game feel like it had its own “theme”
Terrible decision and I hope this gets changed or a way to opt out quickly. At least with the explore tab I could ignore it and not have it infect every game I “own”
It remains to be seen how Sony will react to the presumably gathering torches and pitchforks. One might imagine them walking this one back, but they’re just as likely to leave it.
Source: IGN
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