Unofficial black PS5 faceplates are on sale now

Black faceplates for your PS5 consoles are now on sale, but they're not being made by Sony.

If you've been looking forward to the day you can change up your console's colour, you're in luck. American company dbrand has started putting its stock of PS5 'Darkplates' on sale, but the bad news is that they might be as hard to get hold of.

At the time of writing, these Darkplates will only start shipping in May, with the February, March and April stock already selling out.

You might recall a certain legal issue around PS5 faceplates floating around due to a patent filed by Sony on the design of the PS5 console. These Darkplates, however, are purported by dbrand to be "totally legal", rather jovially saying that the plates feature a "familiar-but-legally-distinct apocalyptic spin on the classic PlayStation button shapes".

There are two types of Darkplates being sold; one for the digital PS5 and one for the disc tray version of the console, the former of which has totally sold out at the time of writing. That means you're looking at spending £35 ($49) on the disc tray version, and, believe it or not, this is actually a reduced price as they normally go for £42 ($59)

If you cast your mind back to 2020, you might remember a PS5 teardown video which showed just how easy it is to remove the console's faceplate. This sparked a conversation online as to if there would be any custom faceplates available, with some retailers trying to sell their own unofficial versions.

One retailer, CustomizeMyPlates, tried to sell a series of colorful custom faceplates for the PS5 last year, but Sony shut the operation down a few weeks later when its lawyers intervened.

Either way, it remains unclear if Sony is going to let this one slide. Dbrand's webpage for the Darkplates is extremely tongue-in-cheek, with one of their icons on the product page outright saying "PS5 Darkplates. Go ahead, sue us".

Haven't managed to snag a PS5 yet? Here's where to buy a PS5.