Sony will scan players and put their faces in PS5 games

The news around PlayStation hasn’t been great lately, and Sony has just the thing to fix that. Maybe.

On the PlayStation Blog, Sony announced a new initiative called The Playerbase. Through The Playerbase, fans of PlayStation games can apply to have their faces scanned and their likenesses used in PS5 games. The first game to do this will be Gran Turismo 7, in which one lucky fan who makes it through the application process will appear as a time-limited character within the game.

This initiative will be available to players in “select markets” in most parts of the world, per PlayStation. There’s an application webpage you can visit if you’d like to put your face in GT7 or whichever future games Sony wants to do this with. The application process itself seems interesting, as you’ll have to “answer a few questions about your experiences on PlayStation,” log in to your PlayStation Network account, and undergo a video interview before making it into any games. It seems like Sony wants to prioritize people with a long history of playing PlayStation games, so this might be the first time in history that having a high Trophy count can come in handy.

For PlayStation, this is a lightweight and frivolous headline in a sea of bad ones recently. Sony recently increased the prices of PS5 consoles nearly six years into the console’s lifespan due to economic pressures, for example. A report also came out indicating the PlayStation 6, which may also have its planned 2027 launch delayed, might not include a built-in disc drive at all.

But hey, maybe The Playerbase will get people excited about PlayStation again.