Ever since the PlayStation Network launched all the way back in 2006, users have asked for the ability to changes their names on the service. Sadly however, that particular feature seems no closer now than ever. Responding to a question in regards to when name changes might make their way to the PSN, President of Sony World Wide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida stated, “I wish I knew.”
His video response, posted on Twitter, continues, “We are aware that lots of people are asking for the feature… 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 will be able to provide that feature in the future.”
This is a rather different answer than that offered by Sony Computer Entertainment America’s President and CEO Shawn Layden, when, speaking with IGN last year, he 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… [We want to do name changing] in a way that’s transparent, but also don’t let people morph themselves, either.”
Of course, the engineering problems Shuhei Yoshida is referring to could easily be centered around that very transparency, but either way, for the time being, name changes don’t seem to be on the way any time soon.
It’s clearly still a topic on Sony’s mind however. Just this past week a survey surfaced asking players what new features PSN users would like to see, including name changes, PS1 and PS2 classics, and avatars.
Personally, now a college graduate, I would love to not still be using the same name that was set up my freshman year of high school. But what about you? Do you want to see PSN name changes? Have a particularly bad PSN name you’d like to change? Let us know in the comments.