I don’t have the statistics to back this up, but I’m probably not very far off when I assume that the first comment in about 90% of all PlayStation Blog posts is some variation of “When can I change my psn id?!?”. The answer to that is, probably, early 2019.
It has been a rough road including consequences of some agonizing engineering choices made over a decade ago, but the perhaps final soar thumb (hey, there’s cross play now) is about to get mended. Users will be able to try it out soon if they are a part of the preview program, otherwise PlayStation is aiming at a full rollout in early 2019. Assuming that something doesn’t completely catch on fire during the testing.
The first change is free, but changes after that is paid. If you’re a Plus member it will amount to €4.99/£3.99/$4.99 USD/ CAD, and if not it will cost you €9.99/£7.99/$9.99 USD / CAD. After the change you can opt in to display your old PSN ID next to your new one as to not confuse the heck out of everyone.
And now for the complicated part. The solution is compatible for all PS4 games published after April 1st 2018, and most big games released prior to that. The change will probably not be compatible with Vita and PS3 games, and some PS4 titles. As such, you could very well encounter a bunch of issues with these games, most of which I guess even PlayStation find it hard to predict. If everything goes to hell, you can revert back to your old ID, which should fix most of the problems that may have occurred.
Kids, this is what happens when you link stuff to a text value instead of a unique numeric ID, but hopefully we’ll all get out on the other side with our new PSN IDs looking sharp.
You can check out the complete announcement here.
Man that would’ve been cool to have like 2 years ago when I got my PS4, instead I just started completely fresh because I hated my old username