PlayStation, Xbox Take Over Las Vegas Sphere in Back-to-Back Ads

PlayStation and Xbox shell out for some expensive promos on the Las Vegas Sphere.

By Tanner Dedmon

During a massive month for both companies, PlayStation and Xbox flashed their respective brands across the exterior of the viral Las Vegas Sphere this week with ads boasting what the companies have going for themselves. For Xbox, this included images of things like the console Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles as well as games such as Starfield and the Hellblade series while PlayStation capitalized on its recent release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2. The ads are just the latest examples of the spectacles pulled off by the Las Vegas Sphere that consistently make waves on the Internet.

Xbox staked its claim on the Sphere first with its ads going up before PlayStation's, but the latter took over immediately afterwards with its Spider-Man showcase. You can check out each of the ads below after they were shared online by the companies' various social media accounts:

Xbox and PlayStation's Las Vegas Sphere Ads

Xbox's Jeff Rubenstein shared a video of Xbox's ad at the Las Vegas Sphere on Twitter this week for those who couldn't see it in person. It opens with the iconic Xbox logo before showing off some of the games mentioned previously and then the consoles currently available. There's supposedly going to be a cylindric Xbox released at some point as a refresh for the current-gen lineup, but given how that one hasn't been announced yet, it was naturally absent from the ad.

And within days after Xbox took over the Las Vegas Sphere, it was PlayStation's turn. Focusing solely on its release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, the ad shows the Spider-Men in the game, Peter Parker and Miles Morales, as well as Venom.

The timing of the ads makes sense given what the companies have had going on in recent weeks. For PlayStation, that only entails the release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, the sequel to the original Marvel's Spider-Man and the spin-off Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales and the Marvel game that people have been waiting on for years ever since the first game foreshadowed a follow-up. For Xbox, its claim to fame this month is the closure of the Activision Blizzard acquisition that'll give it ownership of everything from Call of Duty games to World of Warcraft and more.

Related:

What Is the Las Vegas Sphere?

If you're unfamiliar with the Las Vegas Sphere itself, it's a massive dome in Vegas where ads and artistic displays take over the exterior of the building from time to time to dazzle onlookers. Inside, it's a venue that hosts concerts as well as other experiences. Its main showcase going on right now is The Sphere Experience which costs about $170 to attend, and the first big concerts it's hosted are a series of U2 shows that'll run you upwards of $500 for tickets.

While the Sphere's owners, Sphere Entertainment, haven't publicized how much it costs to run ads on the exterior, it's reportedly around $450,000 to take out 90-second ads that repeat over the course of several hours, so don't expect to be seeing every publisher taking over the Sphere after PlayStation and Xbox.

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