PSN Online ID changes are on their way…with some catches

For years, PlayStation owners have been stuck with the ID that they chose when they first made their PSN account.  This is fine if you picked a name that you would still be content with a decade later. However, if you chose something that sounded cool when you were a teenager, but really hasn’t aged well, Sony forced you to stick with it or create a new account. Finally, Sony has caught up and revealed a new way of changing Online ID names. This feature will begin rolling out in early 2019. However, these changes do come with some awkward caveats.

Firstly, you can change your Online IDs as many times as you want. The first change is free, but every time after that, it will cost $10USD (or $5 if you are subscribed to PS+).  We don’t know what the Australian pricing will be yet. Whilst it is a bit annoying that Sony is attaching a price tag to this feature, at least it won’t cost players anything to change it once.

However, the main catch to this service is that not all games will support changing Online IDs.  According to Sony, “This feature is compatible with PS4 games originally published after April 1, 2018, and a large majority of the most-played PS4 games that were released before this date. However, please note not all games and applications for PS4, PS3 and PS Vita systems are guaranteed to support the online ID change, and users may occasionally encounter issues or errors in certain games.”

In addition, you will be able to display your old ID alongside your new one so that online friends can recognise you.  However, “once you decide to display your old ID or not, you won’t be able to adjust this after completing the online ID change process”.

Hopefully, these will be issues that will be ironed out during the beta testing period. This is a feature that has been highly requested since the early days of the PlayStation 3.  Like with cross-play, Sony has been behind Microsoft on this issue. At least by 2019, all players will be able to pick PSN Online IDs that they are happy with.