Earlier this week, many gamers were shocked when they turned on their PlayStation 5 consoles and were faced with a dramatic change to their dashboards. Each game’s icon on the dashboard typically has a piece of art from that game as a background. Instead, a full-screen promotional news post or ad for the game (and sometimes a sale featuring the game) appeared in the background. Ads were often outdated or irrelevant to users. Especially considering that the user usually owned the game in question.
PlayStation quickly published a fix and assured users that this was a bug introduced in a major update and not a change in advertising strategy. However, whether it’s a mistake or not, it also provides a glimpse into how players will react if PlayStation actually rolls out a change like this. Needless to say, they were not happy. The biggest complaint is Sites like X and reddit Despite the PS5 having a setting to turn off ads, there was no obvious way to disable them. Some users have even said that these full-page promotional images have turned them off from using the PS5 altogether.
The second biggest thing was that the ads and news that appeared on the new displays were not relevant and were often months out of date. Users noted that this is especially annoying when playing older games, as these promotional posts can contain spoilers or are just ridiculously old. However, in most cases, users who noticed this change made it clear that they did not want intrusive ads on their dashboards. Despite this being a bug, it could prove valuable as a case study if PlayStation considers rolling out full-screen dash ads.
In personal news, I’ll still be catching up on September games before October releases like Silent Hill 2 Remake, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard begin. Probably. That said, it’s officially spooky season, so you might want to try your hand at Zoochosis, an atmospheric indie horror title that has popped up online.
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what to play this week
what’s new:
- Remastered until dawn
- throne and freedom
- NHL 25
- Starfield: Shattered Space
- Master Detective Archives: Rain Code Plus
- Metal: Hellsinger VR
- zoosis
- Mobile Suit Gundam Silver Phantom
- Sword Art Online Fractured Daydream
- kill night
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Patrick Star Game
New features for subscription services:
- MLB The Show 24 (Xbox Game Pass)
- Open Road (Xbox Game Pass)
- Sif (Xbox Game Pass)
- WWE 2K24 (PlayStation Plus Essential)
- Dead Space (PlayStation Plus Essential)
- Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! (PlayStation Plus required)
- Alien Isolation (Amazon Luna Prime)
- Mortal Shell (Amazon Luna Prime)
- Dusk (Amazon Luna Prime)
- Perish (Amazon Luna Prime)
- Tormented Souls (Amazon Luna Prime)
- Amid Evil (Amazon Luna Prime)
- Valfaris (Amazon Luna Prime)
- Doomblade (Amazon Luna Prime)
- Monster Harvest (Amazon Luna Prime)
- Breakfast with Bear (GeForce Now)
- Monster Jam Showdown (GeForce Now)
- TerraTech Worlds (GeForce Now)
- NBA 2K25 Arcade Edition (Apple Arcade)
