Nothing reminds you of how clever your 15-year old self was quite like a username. And PlayStation fans have been begging Sony for years to allow them the option of changing their PlayStation Network username. It seems like they may finally be listening, but don’t expect the change to happen anytime soon.
In an interview after the PSX keynote, Shawn Layden, president and CEO of Sony Interactive, addressed the problem. After joking about the “elves being hard at work,” he continued on to say that it is, “more complex than you think.” Layden did not go into specifics on what the problem was exactly, but he did say that he is hoping to give players the ability to change their PSN username by the next PSX. Obviously tired of the question, Layden finished the interview with, “I hope we’ll see events occur that you won’t have to ask me that question next PSX.”
This has been a big issue since 2014, and Sony executives have given the community multiple excuses. When the grumbling of changing PSN names first began, Layden said the name-changing option wasn’t available due to griefing. In an interview with GameSpot, the Sony exec said, “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. We want to stop that.” In 2015, Shuhei Yoshida said he wasn’t sure if changing the PSN username was something they would ever be able to do.
Obviously, there is no guarantee as to whether this feature is actually coming to PSN over the next year. However, take some solace in the fact that the Sony execs are actually looking into making it a possibility.
How do you feel about the PSN name-changing? Let us know in the comments below!
