Sony PS5 Patent Suggests Official Faceplates Might Be Coming

Sony’s PS5 con­sole might be get­ting a touch of cus­tomiza­tion at some point, as the com­pa­ny has been grant­ed a patent for a new set of face­plates. First seen by OPAt­tack, the patent is titled “Cov­er for Elec­tron­ic Device,” and is detailed as an “orna­men­tal design for a cov­er for an elec­tron­ic device.” There are even dia­grams of the PS5 face­plates for illus­tra­tive purposes.

As a note, the patent does­n’t specif­i­cal­ly refer to replace­ment face­plates or skins that can wrapped around the plates. How­ev­er, this is a good indi­ca­tion that some kind of cus­tomiza­tion might be on the way if Sony actu­al­ly uses this patent.

Offi­cial­ly, the PS5 only has to orig­i­nal white face­plate for now. There are third-par­ty options avail­able, but these com­pa­nies have made ene­mies of Sony, being tar­get­ed with cease and desist orders.

Two of the more notable exam­ples were CMP Shells and Dbrand. CMP Shells got legal atten­tion from Sony in 2020. Dbrand offered a selec­tion of “Dark­plates” for $50. They saw imme­di­ate pop­u­lar­i­ty, with Dbrand dar­ing the major con­sole man­u­fac­tur­er to sue them. Well Sony took no time in send­ing Dbrand a legal notice, forc­ing the com­pa­ny to shut down all Dark­plate pro­duc­tion. They then replaced them with Dark­plate 2.0 shells.