It's now been "resolved", so things should be back to how you like them.
If you recently had your PS5's homescreen shove a weirdly out-of-date or slightly irrelevant advert in your face when hovering over one of your games, there's good news - you shouldn't run into such a thing anymore. Why? Well, because PlayStation says it's "resolved" a "technical error" that was causing what some had interpreted to potentially be a new advert system.
The fact that hovering over the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn or Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales flicked up ads for Lego Horizon Adventures and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - with the latter citing a 2023 movie as "coming soon" - drew a lot of criticism on social media, with folks who like staring at homescreens unhappy that they could no longer do so without seeing this kind of thing.
Thankfully, Sony says it's now sorted the issue. "A tech error with the Official News feature on the PS5 console has since been resolved," reads a tweet from the official Ask PlayStation account, "There have been no changes to the way game news is displayed on PS5."
So, yep, just a simple error was apparently the cause of a lovely space marine's mug beiung being replaced by a YouTube thumbnail of a guy explaining lore and NBA 2K25 still advertising its early access kicking off a good few weeks to a month after that happened (thanks, IGN). This wouiuld also explain why some games seemed to be totally exempt from the sudden change, which could only be 'turned off' by disconnecting your console from the internet while it was live.
A tech error with the Official News feature on the PS5 console has since been resolved, There have been no changes to the way game news is displayed on PS5.
— Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation) September 30, 2024So, with this thing having now been reverted, if you like staring at homescreen art of games that you own, because actually playing them is just too much hassle, or understadably just don't like being advertised at via a huge splash whenever you go to fire up whatever's giving you your current fix, you can live happy knowing that all is well. For now, at least.
Which bit of PS5 homescreen art is your favourite to stare at for hours on end? Let us know below!