PlayStation users will be able to change their PlayStation Network ID starting early 2019, with the feature beta (PlayStation Preview Program) currently available to users who have already pre-registered as testers.
The feature is currently only compatible with PS4 games published after April 1 2018.
As detailed in a blog post, the upcoming feature will also be compatible with “a large majority of the most-played PS4 games that were released” before April 1 2018.
It’s not clear what those titles are yet, or whether the developers behind those games have the resources available to revisit old projects and push out patches for compatibility issues.
It’s also worth noting that not all games and applications for PS4, PS3 and PS Vita systems are guaranteed to support the online ID change, and PlayStation users may encounter issues in certain games because of the incompatibility.
PlayStation advises users who run into issues to revert back to their old ID (users can only revert once during the preview program), which will solve most issues caused by the ID change.
When the new PSN feature officially launches, a list of compatible games published before April 1 2018 will be provided to the PlayStation website.