Multiple Play Station Network Accounts

When I got the PS3 last year I set up a PlayStationNetwork (PSN) account with my own UK address and also an account with a USA address. This allowed me to view games from the UK Playstation store and the USA one too.

2 nights ago I decided to set up accounts for Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan too so that I can download games from their marketplaces. The singapore marketplace seems to be identical to the Hong Kong one so theres probably not much reason to sign up to it.

If you have a PS3 and download the odd game, I recommend doing the same as it gives you a better choice of games and games which are also available in the UK are cheaper in the USA, HK and Japan marketplaces.

Setting up an account for each zone is fairly simply. First thing you need to do is create a new user. Then when you go to the PSN area of your XMB you will see that you need to sign up to the PSN again. The registration process is the same as the UK one but my advice is to setup the USA account first so that you are familar with each step again. The major difference with each sign up is that you need to enter an address from that region (I just looked up the addresses of some Pizza Huts in each region, they always have a store locator!).

The Hong Kong registration process is very easy as you can select English as your language (as is the Singapore one). The only difference is you need to enter a Chinese family name too. The Japanese registration process is a bit more confusing since it is all in Japanese but if you do the setup for the for one of the other marketplaces just before you should be familar with each step. However, I recommend using this guide for setting up a Japan PSN account as it shows you each step with screenprints and explanations of each stage.

You may have to use a different email address for each region too but I believe I only had to do this with the Japanese one.

So whats the best marketplace?

In my opinion the USA marketplace is the best overall but each marketplace has games which the other ones don’t which is why it’s worth signing up to all of them.

• UK - Decent selection of games but prices are the most expensive.
• USA - Has the largest selection of games. Games which are £3.50 to download in the UK are $5.99 to download in the USA ie. in general games are marginally cheaper (more savings with more expensive games like warhawk/tekken5). They have a lot of games which haven’t reached the UK as yet (for example Streeth Figher Alpha from the PS1 and Fatal Inertia EX).
• Hong Kong - Not a fantastic selection of games, even less than the UK marketplace. Most games are available in English, Chinese and Japanese (with some available in Korean). Games are incredibly cheap though. The retro games which cost £3.50 in the UK work out to be about £2.20 a game.
• Japan - Great selection of games with titles such as Metal Gear Solid 1 and Bio Hazard 2 (aka Resident Evil 2). Unfortunately, as you would expect, all games are in Japanese so most titles would be unplayable. It’s still worth signing up though as Fighting and sports games are usually easy to decipher, it’s just a shame some of the great titles which are there are not available in English.

Registration takes a few minutes for each region. I won’t lie to you, it’s a bit of a pain in the ass but once it’s done you will have a much wider range of games to download as well as demos, themes and trailers. If you are struggling with any part of the sign up process please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help