Earlier this month, Sony New firmware update launchedWait, there’s a new customizable welcome center on the PlayStation 5 home screen. is one of the low-key ones Best new features The console has been evolving for years, but it’s been overshadowed by an equally frustrating change that has resulted in a bunch of random crap, including ads, appearing on players’ screens whether they want it to or not. .
The Welcome Center is a new starting tile on the PS5’s main menu that lets players choose what’s displayed, from controller battery life to discounted games on their PlayStation Store wish list. It also allows players to turn off the optional News Feed widget, which randomly posts announcements for all games they follow. Unfortunately, that news feed is now infecting the rest of the console’s home screen.
Tiles for installed games used to show background art or activity cards as you scrolled through them, but according to recent changes, they now pull from the latest items in that game’s news feed. Sometimes the results are innocuous, but other times it means anything from YouTube thumbnails to other game marketing taking over the screen when choosing a specific game to play.
“It turns out that the recent PS5 UI update lets you disable all ads on the dashboard, which is really nice,” Tweet User Earl Turlet Weekend. “Now every game on the home screen will show ads in the background and there’s no way to remove them lol.” YouTuber Mystic Also compiled a complete video Take players through these changes.
The most egregious examples include the “What is Warhammer” video Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2this Spider-Man: Miles Morales Page showing promotional images Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse It was released over a year ago, and there are a few praise posts that exaggerate the game’s art with review scores and recommendations. Sometimes the news feed will show another game entirely, e.g. Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition On PS4, its background art now displays LEGO Horizon Adventure instead. “It’s a huge downgrade to the user interface,” one player wrote on Reddit Call on others to protest the changes. “ring of fire Advertising Mousepad FFS.
Hopefully Sony will reinstate this change. Ideally, players would be able to customize their game backgrounds just like in the Welcome Center, choosing from official artwork or even their own screenshots. If some players do want quick access to a news feed for a corresponding game, perhaps Sony can do a better job of showcasing their curated content. In many cases, a simple list of the latest official headlines from the PlayStation blog or these games’ social media accounts would be much more useful than the current way of building feeds.
Updated September 30, 2024 at 4:41 pm ET: News feed issues is a mistake said Daniel Hiatt, senior product manager at PlayStation. Sounds like it will be fixed soon.
