Gaming
Sony's PS5 faceplates are finally here and surprisingly affordable
After a year of waiting, Sony is releasing its own line of faceplates for the PS5 in five different colors starting early next year.
Feast your eyes! The PlayStation 5 is finally getting first-party colored faceplates. Better yet, the price is extremely reasonable.
Announced alongside three new DualSense color options (Nova Pink, Starlight Blue, and Galactic Purple) on the official PlayStation Blog, the faceplates, which Sony is calling “console covers,” will be available in five matching colors — the three new controller-matching colors and Cosmic Red and Midnight Black to match the corresponding DualSense controllers that came out in the summer.
If you’re itching to slap one of these covers on your PlayStation 5 — assuming you still aren’t waiting to get one — you won’t have to wait long. The PlayStation 5 console covers will be available for purchase starting in January of 2022 for $55. Considering how Sony has a history of cornering the accessories market and charging an arm and a leg for their products (remember the PlayStation Vita memory card?), the price is shockingly low and costs much less than competing products from the dbrand.
2022-ish — The January date has a big asterisk next to it. According to Sony, only the Midnight Black and Cosmic Red options will be available for purchase at launch. What’s even more confusing is that you’ll only be able to buy the covers through the Direct PlayStation store at first on January 21, with retailers receiving units later on February 18. As for the other three console covers in the new colorways, Sony is only giving a vague launch date for the first half of 2022. You can begin pre-ordering the covers starting today from the PlayStation store.
According to the store listings, the three new controller colorways will be available starting on January 14, though the Galactic Purple controller will be a Direct PlayStation exclusive until February 11. Unlike the $70 standard white and Midnight Black console covers, the new controllers will cost the same as the Cosmic Red controller: $75.
Better late than never — It wasn’t long after the PlayStation 5 launch that two things happened: fans wanted customizable faceplates and third-party manufacturers stepped up to offer them. The problem was that Sony’s legal team didn’t like that and took down companies like CustomizeMyPlates and their too-similarly-named site named Platestation5 — they should have seen that coming. Later, when dbrand taunted Sony to sue the company for selling its own line of faceplates, Sony did that exact same thing. The company, however, eventually came back with a slightly different design to, essentially, sidestep patent issues. Just recently, dbrand once again taunted Sony (and PETA for some reason), by posting an image of a PlayStation 5 partially clad in leather, telling both companies to “have a terrible weekend.”
Boundless levels of chaotic energy aside, the dbrand plates have, up to this point, been the best option for PlayStation 5 faceplates, but with Sony launching its own version at a cheaper price, that might not be true for long. It appears that Sony’s takedown of these faceplate companies was all leading to the eventual launch of its console covers. But the part that’s hard to grasp is why Sony took so long to debut the console covers, especially when a large contingent of PlayStation 5 owners were clamoring for such a product. Whatever the reasoning may be, you’ll finally be able to live out your matte black PlayStation 5 fantasy starting next month.