The PlayStation community received a special gift this week. In the form of an official announcement regarding the changing of our PlayStation Network Online ID’s. The internet rejoiced with many saying “Finally!” while others saying, “Psh, Xbox has had that forever”. It still was something PlayStation gamers have been dying to have available. This includes me, a PlayStation loyalist, with a need for this very feature.
Since the glory days of America Online, I have always been bad at choosing online ID’s. My first AOL screen name was “YoYoJoey” because at the time YO-YO’s were the craze. A naming convention I should not have stuck to. When I purchased my PlayStation 3 I had a hard time figuring out which username to pick. I could go with my City of Heroes main, Torturous Rage, or maybe my favorite Pokémon at the time, Electryke. Instead of these possibly cool names, I decided to go with the title from my favorite episode from season four of the hit Canadian teen drama, Degrassi: The Next Generation.
Things change of course (although my love for Degrassi still rages on) as I became involved in social media, online gaming, and streaming. I realized I needed a cool name to make myself stand out, but also it needed to become my online persona. This increased the need for a PlayStation Network Online ID name change. I wanted all of my “branding” to be consistent. My Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Discord, and many more needed to be easy to find with just one name. Since realizing this just a couple of years ago I had almost given up on changing my PSN name to match my other accounts. There was also no way I was going to abandon my PSN account. I own too many digital titles and I have all of my sweet trophies so I just pushed that dream out of my mind.
PlayStation has been making some big moves with cross-play and cross progression involving Fortnite, and now the PSN name change capability coming soon. Better late than never. By the time the official release of PSN name changes does hit in early 2019, maybe I will change my mind about parting ways with my long time online ID. Thanks to podcasts like IGN’s Beyond with Colin Moriarty and Greg Miller, and Kinda Funny’s PS I Love You XOXO featuring segments such as “This Week’s Worst PSN Name” and “Bad PSN Name of the Week” I know there are plenty of PlayStation gamers out there that will gladly welcome this feature and be forever thankful to Shuhei, for finally letting us change our names.
