Sony: Only Two Consoles Can be Activated to Each PSN Account

Sony today announced that PlayStation 3 and PSP users will only be able to play their games on two activated consoles.

The change will come into effect on November 18 and means that if a gamer owns - or has activated to their PSN account - more than two PS3 consoles or two PSPs, then their downloaded games can only be played on two of them.

"As of November 18, 2011, the number of devices that can be activated on one PlayStation Network account for game content purchased from the PlayStation Store will be updated", Sony said in a blog post.

"For game content purchased after November 18, 2011, a new policy will apply and the number of devices that can be activated will be as follow:

PS3: Users will be able to play the game on up to 2 activated PS3 systems.

PSP: Users will be able to play the game on up to 2 activated PSP systems."

This change has caused outage, with PS3 owners complaining that since they have had two consoles that have been activated but have since broken, then they are unable to deactivate them or download previously-bought games onto a new console.

But the blog post explains: "PlayStation Network users are able to change the activation setting through each device, and Sony Computer Entertainment plans to provide a new PlayStation Network account management website where users will be able to deactivate particular devices attached to their PlayStation Network account via their PC."

It seems that the change will only affect gamers who wish to have more than two consoles activated at once, and want to play all of their downloaded content on all consoles.