If there’s a screen in your home, advertisers will find a way to fill it. In recent years, we’ve seen a deluge of ads everywhere we turn, from when we pause a show on a streaming service to a free TV that ships with a second screen that always shows ads. The trend continued this week when PS5 owners began seeing unavoidable ads on the home screen.
As spotted by IGN on Monday, PS5 owners have started seeing ads on the home screen when they hover over a game icon. Following a recent software update, the console is now randomly replacing the game art that used to appear with ads labeled as “official news.”
For instance, when IGN hovered over the icon for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, an ad for a video from the publisher about the series popped up. Even weirder, the ad accompanying Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales was promoting a video for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which it proclaims is “coming soon exclusively in cinemas.” That animated movie was released in theaters on June 2, 2023. What exactly is going on here?
Well, it might have been a bug. At least, that’s what PlayStation senior product manager Daniel Hiatt said on X earlier today, but he has since inexplicably deleted the post.
At this point, we’re not sure what to think. Hiatt’s social media post made it sound like this is all a huge misunderstanding and that it will be fixed soon. Now that his post is gone, PS5 owners are left wondering if his assessment wasn’t entirely accurate.
Either way, it’s disappointing to see Sony crowd the PS5 home screen with obnoxious ads. If this is, in fact, a peek into the future as opposed to a bug, it’s a bleak one.
UPDATE: The official Ask PlayStation account on X has clarified that this was a bug and that it has seemingly already been fixed:
