Sony Confirm Vita IS Only One Account Per Machine

nofi 73 Comments

Will it? Won’t it? Well, no, it won’t.

Despite saying that the initial rumours were wrong (that said the PlayStation Vita only allowed one PSN account at a time) Sony have backtracked, and have today said that – yes – our worst ever fears are confirmed.

[drop2]Well, not our worst ever fears, those involve mutant potatoes and an unhealthy amount of static, but it’s still a little disappointing to read that we’ll need to factory reset the portable to change accounts.

“You will be able to just insert another memory card,” said Sony a few days back, suggesting it would be easy peasy lemon squeezy.

“It’s not just a case of switching out memory cards, it’s clearing out all of your saved data on the Vita itself when you do the factory reset,” said Sony today.  Not so lemony fresh now, huh?

A few of the comments recently on this suggested that this wasn’t really an issue, but whilst it won’t affect everyone, it does affect those of us with family and friends who want their own Trophies and Friends lists, and those of us with multiple PSN accounts used for buying content from different territories.

Like myself.

And it’s worth noting that this is actually worse than the already slightly messy situation on the PSP, which at least let you change PSN accounts via a few menu clicks, not forcing the user to wipe all the content off first.

We’re expecting our import Vitas in about a week, so we’ll have a look for ourselves as soon as possible.  In the meantime, be wary of those potatoes.

Via Wired, which is a lovely turn of phrase.

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73 Comments

  1. not bothered still a day one for me.

  2. I don’t really care about the Vita as I’m not a handheld gaming type of person, so this won’t affect me at all… But if I was someone that was interested the thing that would get my goat is Sony saying it was possible to start with and now suddenly it’s not.

    Why do companies bother releasing this type of information before it’s set in stone? It’s obviously a sore point for people so it’s not going to help saying ‘oh yea you can do this and that’ then a few days later ‘you know those things we promised you? Yea, we lied’.

    Horrendous marketing, trying to draw people in with false promises.

  3. Still don’t get why you would need more then 1 account on a handheld. If I would borrow it to my syster or brother they would just play singleplayer anyway.

    • As it says in the article. Plenty of reasons.

  4. This is quite annoying… I usually buy UK games because I’m not always sure the German versions have English language support and I hate playing games in German. Buying games from the UK also means that I can only get DLC from the UK store. All my trophies are stored under my German PSN account so basically I’m effed when it comes to buying DLC or PSN games.

  5. Won’t effect me, my son’s the only other person who’ll use it and any Trophies he earns will have to go on my account – Shame!!! lol

  6. Not so much of a problem for me. For gaming I’ll be sticking to one account, though I’ve always had the habit of having a US account on the side to grab demos a wee bit earlier than the UK store.

    • Yeh that is the only downside for me too, and I can certainly live with that. Shame for people it does affect though.

  7. Meh, i can live with this. But how about as a peace offering they bring it out earlier here? :-)

  8. So let me get this straight… I sign in on US PSN account, download games etc, remove memory card containing downloaded games etc, format vita, sign in on UK PSN account on formatted vita, Insert memory card containing games etc, play games etc… For the amount of times I do this, I cant see this being that annoying, but obviously, people who do this regularly are boned.

    • You’ll need two memory cards, in this case. One for each PSN account. I think.

      • So in essence, downloadable content for Vita is PSN account locked? You cant access content on a memory card that was downloaded via a US PSN account with a UK PSN account. I suppose this is how its “Supposed” to work in Sonys eyes. Same as in the EU we arnt “supposed” to access the US store and download things a week or 2 early at all. Still, this is looking more and more likely that I will need more than 1 memory card, which means that Ive now changed my mind about the way I will be obtaining my games. I was pretty hell bent on sticking to downloading my games only, but now, buying the game cartridges in a retailer is looking more viable.

  9. Though it won’t affect me as if my bro plays my vita then it’ll only be a quick bash so there will be no need for him to have his own account. I can see why it pisses some people off though as it will affect them.

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