Let’s be clear on something, I love my PS3. Adore it even. Saying so doesn’t automatically mean that I hate the Xbox360 or those who love it though.

There is one thing I hate about my PS3 though: the Playstation Network (PSN). Don’t get me wrong, I love the content and I love how easy it is to buy stuff on there – that is if they would make it easy for me to buy anything on there.

First a bit of background.

The PSN is divided up into regions like Asia, US, Europe/UK and Australia/NZ, which is exactly how the regions have always been traditionally divided up forever. The problem begins when you first start your PS3 up and create a PSN account (which you must do if you ever want to do anything online). The country you select during this process locks you to the relevant region. If your like me you’ll find that your country isn’t even listed and… well, you’re in for quite an adventure.

From that point onwards you can never interact with someone with an account in a different region. In fact, the existence of other regions and all of the goodies available to them is completely invisible to you. The only way to switch regions is to rest your PS3 to the factory settings and create a new account selecting a country in the region you want to be in. Oh, and don’t think you can use the same username because it’s already taken by your old, now unused account.

In that case, “why”, you ask, “would anyone select a country other than the US?”, and your question is a good one because after all, they get all the good stuff on there. Stuff that never appears on any of the other PSN Stores and of the stuff that does they get it a whole lot earlier. Unfortunately it isn’t that easy.

Locking yourself to a region via your selected country you select isn’t the only limitation, doing so also restricts the origin of the credit card you can use to pay for anything. For example, if you select the US you can only use credit cards issued in the US. If you select Australia only credit cards issued there will work.

I don’t know why they did it like this, but it’s damned irritating. Right now I have to jump through hoops to get anything on the store by purchasing the prepaid cards through a 3rd party for an inflated price (I’d prefer to purchase them direct from Sony, but nooo), redeem the code from the cards on the PSN website, then go spend it. I have a perfectly working credit card and it drives me crackers that they won’t accept it. A google search or two tells me that at least I’m not alone in my frustration with Sony regarding this.

None of this is news to me, I’ve been living with this situation since I bought my PS3. It’s infuriated me once more because they’ve today made Final Fantasy VII available on the PSN Store and I wanted to buy it but have to go through Sony’s idiocy once more.

I dream that one day they will fix it, but we all know they won’t.