PlayStation Responds to Controversy Surrounding Invasive Ads on PS5

Sony says recent ads on PS5 have simply been a "tech error".

By Logan Moore

Sony has released a statement responding to a recent controversy related to invasive ads that were appearing on PlayStation 5 consoles. Within recent weeks, Sony released a new update for PS5 that added the "Welcome Hub" to the console's dashboard. This new feature allowed users to also fine-tune their experience on PS5 more than ever before and even let them remove ads from the home page. In the wake of this overhaul, though, some PS5 users reported that they were still seeing ads on the console, just in different places than before. Now, Sony has made clear that this wasn't intentional. 

In a message released on social media, Sony chalked up the appearance of these unwanted ads on PS5 as nothing more than a "tech error". The issue, which has now been fixed, led to news and advertisements for various games on PlayStation appearing in the background of select games that were installed on the console. Sony says that on its end, it made no adjustments to how game advertisements were previously displayed, which means that this only happened due to a random mistake. 

"A tech error with the Official News feature on the PS5 console has since been resolved," Sony said on its @AskPlayStation account. "There have been no changes to the way game news is displayed on PS5."

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While it's great to hear that this problem shouldn't be persisting on PS5, Sony could also permanently resolve matters like this by simply bringing themes back to the console. Perhaps more than any other feature, PlayStation fans have been making it known since the launch of the PS5 in 2020 that they want to see dynamic themes from the PS4 era return to Sony's latest hardware. To this point, the "Welcome Hub" is the closest that users have come to seeing this request realized and it seems that Sony is content with this middle ground for the time being.

Did you happen to come across this issue with ads on the PS5 dashboard for yourself in recent days? And how do you feel about Sony's response to this matter? Let me know your own thoughts over on X at @MooreMan12. 

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