PlayStation licensing rules changed on November 18th. To facilitate the new rules they added something to account management on the web, and re-aligned things on that site.
Back in the Spring of 2011 security issues had PSN offline for way too long, and when they finally came back on, Account sign-up couldn’t be accomplished for Sub-Accounts the usual way (as before) and through sniffing around online I came to realize that Sony’s Qriocity site could be signed into with one’s PSN ID credentials and there one could find lots of information that heretofore one may not have been aware of.
That’s the place to go for the current Activation/De-Activation scheme that one needs to clear old no longer held devices, or whatever reason someone would have to do so. I decided to test this since I have 3 PSP’s in our house, 2 PS3′s and one PSP that we no longer have but was not De-Activated before we sent it for service.
On the Qriocity account management area I was able to see all the devices since early this year, but unable to do anything with that old PSP … it’d end up being trouble for us come Vita month, but we figured something could work that out. Ended up Sony really put one to us with the unveiling of 2+2 for PSN licensing. Ouch!
Totally different, so I decided we’d not buy on PSN after the change, but still have Plus through to June 2012, so maybe I’ll download the PS3 junk, that’s all, with maybe putting some of it on our main 2 PSP’s (mine and my sons) if we wish to later.
This is what I did, I logged into Qriocity, and looked at my devices.
The old system allowed me to changed Music and Comics and Video “activations” on the site. I was able to take all that off the OLD PSP we don’t have anymore. But the GAME activation or deactivation had to be done on the actual device.
So yesterday (November 20th) I got to the area for Account management (the Account tab) and chose the “Media and Devices” side tab.
This opens a page with squares for my devices by category.
There is also a main top level tag for Devices, on there it shows the actual devices, and has icons to show what is activated on each, and you can edit the name of the device to your liking.
So on the page that I spoke of previously (Account…Media and Devices …) there are these categories with the number of listed devices in each category.
This is how it looks now:
Video .:| – |:. Game
Activated Devices .:| – |:. Activated Devices
4 PlayStation® Systems .:| – |:. 1 PlayStation® Systems
Music .:| – |:. Comic
Activated Devices .:| – |:. Activated Devices
4 PlayStation® Systems .:| – |:. 3 PlayStation® Systems
On the GAME area there is a downarrow showing, click that and it pops up the information with a button labeled “Deactivate All” which you can click if you so choose.
When I first was going to do this, all appeared above as I have it except for under GAME there were 6 activated devices.
So when I clicked Deactivate All, the “GAME” icon disappeared from the DEVICES lists for each device I own, and the OLD no longer held PSP disappeared entirely. But the Music, Comic and Video all stayed activated.
On the GAME area of Accounts, Media and Devices, there initially was nothing under GAMES.
I logged off and on, and then it was as listed above, “1 PlayStation Sytems”
Now, that is the case? Which one? I don’t know since on the device tab there is not one device I own listed with a GAME icon or activation, so …
I played some pre-Nov-18 games on my PSP, also went to the PSN Store.
My son played something on his PSP as well.
Later someone played stuff on the living room PS3 and I played something on the (now in my office) 2nd PS3 then later someone played on it as well.
All in all it’s totally wishy washy as to what they’ve done. I have no idea what it is really the deal with it. Before all this I had two PS3′s activated for Games, the “living room” one for Video. Only that one shows up on Devices now, but only as activated with Video and Music. My 2nd PS3 isn’t on there at all now, but not ONE SINGLE DEVICE there, be it PS3 or PSP shows a GAME icon on it.
Yet in Accounts, Media and Devices … there on GAME it says 1 PlayStation System is Activated. FWIW which one …
All the PSN games work fine on all the devices. Since we won’t buy much or anything online again, and PSN Plus is something I’ll just put on one PS3 or maybe on two PSP’s for now, then nothing matters about this, I guess.
I read somewhere online (on a comments list from a post) that there is a caveat to “Deactivate All” … you can only do it once every 6 months. No where on the Qriocity site for account management is that listed. Right now it still doesn’t matter, as long as all the content we have already works and continues to work, Great.
One of these days we’ll get a 3rd PS3. Then it’ll be that the living room PS3 and the PS3 in my office will get the games from PSN, if we get any [of which there are a few coming in 2012 that I wanted which are PSN only 
] The PSP thing is troublesome. I have 1 and son has 1 and there is a 3rd that passes around for now. I was thinking of getting one each for my other 2 children eventually (all have Sub-Accounts to my Master Account) but Sony has no care for how accounts are associated, Sub-Account means nothing in terms of what the Master Account has except for what’s in their wallet and what they’ll allow to each Sub-Account monetarily wise.
If I gave my children all PSP’s including mine, that would have been the 5 allowable. But now it’s not so simple. The way it was, all PSP’s are activated to my account. All PSN then goes to every device. If I allowed a child to activate their own PSN ID on a PSP, then anything I buy, is not available for them. If I give them allowance to my PSN Wallet, then they can buy games from PSN with that, and they can play them on the PSP, but only them.
It was and is still an UGLY system.
With the VITA coming out, we were hoping that me and my son would each get one. Then it’d be we’d be a separated family. On the PS3′s we can all play anyone’s content, but the PSP’s are individual devices, no trophies so it never became an issue of using one Master Account on three devices. The Vita’s will be different and whoa nelly, it’s not good, the changes Sony has made, but … anyhow, UMD’s are out there, and HEN stuff, so, PSP’s have some life outside of PSN for the future, that’s it.
PSN had sold me on digital buying for many games. Not really anymore. Only select few. Thank God Bejeweled 3 is out on Blu-ray now for PS3. I hope to get that for Christmas.
All in all, whatever it is, it is. Qriocity shows stuff, but not everything, it’s really quirky, Old content plays on all devices even though no device individually shows that it’s activated for GAMES on that site, but on the Account Management area it does show 1 PS device is activated for GAMES, but it doesn’t list the name of it, and no actual device from the DEVICE tab, once again, shows GAME activation at all.
OK. Whatever.
Oh, by the way, Happy Belated Birthday to PS3. How does it feel for you to be 5, and limited more than before suddenly? It’s OK, Blu-ray is best anyhow.
