Football fans spent months preparing for Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX halftime show, but no one was expecting to see the artist take another dig at Drake with a stadium-sized PlayStation Easter Egg.
Most of the rapper’s set went off as expected. While the crowd cheered to spins on hits from records like DAMN and GNX, appearances from stars like Samuel Jackson and SZA helped take the show to new heights. Of course, there were plenty of references to Lamar’s infamous 2024 beef with Drake, too, but what audiences didn’t expect was how the Super Bowl performer chose to finally close the door on the former Degrassi star. As the lights went down, the words “Game Over” could be seen illuminated on the side of the stadium, while the stage was revealed to feature PlayStation’s iconic cross, circle, triangle, and square symbols.
Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show was always going to be seen as a victory lap when it came to his beef with Drake, but bringing Sony into the fight to finally close that chapter in grand fashion felt especially brutal. Although it’s not quite clear why the To Pimp a Butterfly artist chose to seemingly channel PlayStation for the end of his year-long fight, music and gaming fans have taken to social media to share their appreciation for the dig nonetheless. At the very least, Lamar’s already great performance might be better on rewatch once you realize the stage is one big video game reference.
Kendrick Lamar brought out the PlayStation symbols and said "Game Over" 😭https://t.co/MfkDEJ1F9G
— KAMI (@Okami13_) February 10, 2025
the stage for Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl performance has the PlayStation controller buttons 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/DnkrJGRDtI
— Radec (@realradec) February 10, 2025
Serena Williams, Samuel Jackson, PlayStation references, the GNX, the whole stadium yelling "AMINORR" ugh the dancers in red, white & blue, SZA?! Thank you Kendrick. The revolution will be televised. pic.twitter.com/cKazFowRIC
— Nelly J. 🇯🇲 (@Xo__Jenny) February 10, 2025
With Lamar’s show now finally putting the beef to bed, it’s hard not to look at the weekend as one of PlayStation’s biggest (and strangest) ever. Aside from its surprise spot in the Super Bowl halftime show, the gaming company found itself making headlines on Friday and Saturday morning when gamers were locked out of accessing PSN for an extended period of time. The unscheduled event saw fans unable to play any online titles for around a full day, resulting in one of the longest periods of downtime since the infamous outage of 2011. PlayStation was eventually able to bring PSN back online later yesterday and has stated it will be gifting PlayStation Plus users an additional five days onto their subscriptions.
Meanwhile, the Super Bowl still has time to go, and that means more trailers and commercials for some of the biggest movies and TV shows of 2025. Highlights so far include teasers for Jurassic World Rebirth, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, and Thunderbolts*. For everything included in this year's Big Game, you can see our commercial roundup here.
Is this a PlayStation reference? Too soon after this PSN outage, Kendrick. pic.twitter.com/o9DFae1DAH
— Rob Keyes (@rob_keyes) February 10, 2025
Photo by David Buono/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
