Gaining the ability to change your PSN ID has been a long running concern for Playstation users but to this date there have been no answers for it. Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida recently addressed the issue and if we’re to take his word for it then we shouldn’t be hoping for a fix in the near future.
A Q&A session with Yoshida was held on Playstation France’s Twitter account this past day using the hastag #AskShuhei. The question of “When will we be able to change our PSN names?” came up and the answer Yoshida gave was none too optimistic.
When? I wish I knew! We are aware that lots of people are asking for the feature and our engineers have been looking into what they can do. As soon as we know, we’ll let you know. But as of today, we don’t even know if we can ever do it. Hopefully we’ll be able to provide that feature in the future.
In an interview with IGN last year, Sony Computer Entertainment America president and CEO Shawn Layden tackled the issue going as far as saying adding the feature was not a technical issue but a way to prevent griefing. “We don’t want to make it so that you can go in, grief a bunch of people in Far Cry, change your avatar, change your username, go into CoD and grief everybody over there.” Layden said.
That problem seems small and easily solvable when compared to Microsoft’s handling of the issue. Being able to change your name has been a feature on Xbox platforms for years. The first name change is free while subsequent changes cost $9.99.
In an image courtesy of NeoGAF, a select amount of Playstation 4 users were sent a survey asking what are the most important features to be added. PSN ID Changes were included on that list.
So as far as we can tell those people who created regrettable PSN IDs in their youth will just have to stick it out for awhile.