A Canadian company has announced its own range of custom black PlayStation 5 plates, and it invites Sony to try and levy legal action against its activities.
As shown in the official PlayStation 5 teardown video, the sleek white panels sandwiching the black tower of the console slide off with relative ease. Not only is this a boon for repairs, it's also inspired a number of players to be a little artsy with their shiny new gizmo. Most of them took it upon themselves to add a Spider-Man shell, or create a beautiful gunmetal grey edition, or even this Horizon Forbidden West-themed version. There's something about the scuffs, scrapes and the weather-beaten aesthetic to this PlayStation 5, a total heel-face turn to the glossy evil villain look of the original console.
Anyway, if that sounds like a lot of work and perhaps couldn't someone else do it for you, a cluster of custom plate companies popped up offering a range of colours and finishes for PlayStation 5 plates. As soon as they had, however, Sony swiftly shut them down with the assurance of legal action. This might have been motivated by its own plans to release limited editions of the PlayStation 5, which have been hinted at by its lead UX designer in a post to LinkedIn. "You will definitely be seeing special editions," said Matt MacLaurin. "This is also customisable in ways previous gens weren't."
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Curiouser and curiouser. Well, while we wait for those to be officially unveiled, the peripheral company dbrand will be accepting orders for these fetching matte-black panels for the PlayStation 5. The company specialises in skins, cases, and screen protectors for various gadgets, and announced its interest in mass-producing skins for the new console last year. Posting to its own subreddit, it advises customers to sign up to be notified when orders go live.
"We'll be entering mass production on PS5 Faceplates by year's end. However, we won't be accepting orders until we have stock at our Toronto HQ, ready to ship," it said. "If CD Projekt RED has taught us anything, it's that selling products before they're finished is a bad idea." Sly dig towards the state of Cyberpunk 2077, check. "If you're among the millions of humans who didn't get a PS5 for Christmas, stay calm when you see these go out-of-stock. We anticipate that the demand will outpace supply at launch, but rest assured Faceplates will be a permanent fixture in our portfolio," continued dbrand.
Hang on, isn't the team worried about Sony's legal team catching wind of their unofficial custom plates? No, is the short answer to that question. In response to a fan's pertinent point, dbrand "encourage[s] them to try" levelling legal action towards their plates, and one of the photo captions throws down the gauntlet: "Sue us, Sony." This is a very confident stance from dbrand, and it's even revealed that it wants to make "a curated array of middle skins for customization." Whether or not Sony picks up on the challenge remains to be seen, and it will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
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Moving on, if you are after a special edition of the souped-up console before Sony shoots it down like the last American bald eagle, then may I interest you in this gorgeous PlayStation-2 themed PlayStation 5? The "retro-inspired" design was only an experimental castle in the sky for Reddit user whattheefth, but the reception to the art was incredibly positive. As a result, and thanks to a collaboration from SUP3R5, orders for this wonderful edition will go live on January 5th (that's tomorrow, so set an alarm).
Featured Image Credit: Sony, dbrand