Playstation 5: Sony confuses with ads on the home screen
Some PS5 users were irritated when they suddenly saw "News" ads on their home screen. This is said to have been a bug.
Symbolic image: Playstation controller in front of "Fortnite" screenshot
(Image: Shutterstock.com/SolidMaks)
Is Sony placing ads on the home screen of the Playstation 5? Corresponding user reports have been doing the rounds on social networks over the past few days, and some media outlets have also picked up on them. Now Sony has spoken out: It was reportedly just a technical error that has since been fixed.
The US games magazine IGN has collected some examples of the "ads" that PS5 users saw on their home screen. These are posts that Sony classifies as "news". These can be patch notes for games, but also promotional blog posts or references to other games. These news ads could be seen as soon as players selected a game icon on the home screen.
Normally, a screenshot from the selected video game should be visible in this view –, a status that Sony has now apparently returned to. Displaying a news story instead is not that far-fetched. On Steam, you can also see news selected by the developers for the respective game in the standard view in the library.
Cross-references to other games
This view can be useful – PS5 players were annoyed by the fact that the latest news story filled the entire home screen. This is particularly annoying when it is a clear advertising feature. A screenshot from MP1ST shows, for example, how a full-screen screenshot of "Lego Horizon Adventures" was displayed for the game "Horizon Zero Dawn".
"Nothing has changed in the way game news is displayed on PS5," Sony now writes in an X-Post. It was a "tech error" that has been fixed. The PSN outages that prevented many Playstation players from playing on Tuesday morning have also been fixed. The Playstation Network has been back to normal since Tuesday afternoon.
(dahe)
