US PSN or Asia PSN?

xiasuaykia

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Hi all,

Just got a PS4, just wondering should i create a US PSN account as well?

what are the pros of having a US PSN account VS the SG one?

are the games gonna be cheaper? or there are no apparent benefits?

Thank you all.
 

symbiote28

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Hi all,

Just got a PS4, just wondering should i create a US PSN account as well?

what are the pros of having a US PSN account VS the SG one?

are the games gonna be cheaper? or there are no apparent benefits?

Thank you all.

in a nutshell: sometimes US have better deals but when you convert the rate, it's probably about the same.
 

PierceLee

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US practically has all titles, except Japanese/Chinese language games. SG has very few games, dlcs, avatars, themes, basically everything is far far behind. Generally all indie titles will not make it to SG psn store at all, unless they happen to be offered as PS+ free game (probably arranged by US side). This is not just the tiny indie studios but also including Telltale etc. Even if a title, AAA or indie, appears on SG psn store, very often they are late. Even Sony's own titles can be late, by a lot, or never even appear. After a title gets onto SG psn store, you can also expect that DLCs be late or never appear, even Sony's own DLCs. Hack, Sony's been selling the PS headsets in Asia officially but their headset companion app didn't make it to SG psn store until like 4 years later!

The only thing SG psn store has a lot is DLCs for Musou games (and fighting games). For every game, there are char dlcs, costume dlcs, voice dlcs, wallpaper dlc, bgm dlcs, scenarios dlcs etc etc. Multiple that by 3 platforms (ps4, ps3, psv, esach sold separately). Then multiple that by 3 languages (en, ch, jp, each sold separately). So in a week when a new wave of DLCs hit the store, you can expect to see like 500 or 1000 new DLCs for such games.

Oh and if you are thinking you can buy Chinese versions of games on SG store, think again if its a Bandai Namco title (and some other publishers too, like Sega). Cos they only release the Chinese ver on HK/TW stores, not SG store (while the corresponding EN ver, which typically come months later, even years later in the case of Yakuza games, are not released on HK/TW stores, go figure).

US psn has pre-order and pre-load of many games, especially the AAA titels. SG psn store didn't have this for years, their so call pre-order was basically a free 'ticket' that you buy first which entitles you to a small discount when the game is actually released. There was no pre-loading (pre-loading means the game gets downloaded to your ps before release date and you can start playing the second the release date is reached) on SG psn for ages. It's only this year that SG started real pre-ordering (even though Japan had it for like a year already) but the number of titles still very very few in comparison.

US has sale every week, and flash sales every month (often flash sales are very good deals, like when they have $1 flash sale, $5 flash sale). SG rarely has sale, nowadays they have more but still light years behind in terms of number of titles and price. Just look at the psn store, SG doesn't even have a sale section in its menu, the rare sales only appear in banners. US store has a menu section called "weekly deals", which says it all. Even if they have the same sale, SG has less titles (in a recent sale common across regions, SG had 15 titles on sale, EU had 50, US skip that sale cos they had another going on). Even if they have the same titles on sale, after converting the price to local currency the US price beats SG by a wide margin. SG price only wins once in a blue moon when big developers (like EA and Ubi) put a few titles on clearance.

Talking about price, US store constantly adjusts the regular prices of games as they age. You can expect old games to have a lower price even when not on sale. On the SG store, prices remain forever as the day 1 price even 10 years later. One positive though is that Sony's own big first party games do tend to be slightly cheaper on day 1 on SG store.

Bottomline, US psn account is a MUST HAVE. Even if you don't play using US psn account, you still must have it just for buying the occasional bargain games. (Note if your game is Asia region don't pick up a US dlc even if it's dirty cheap on sale on US side cos very likely they are not cross-region compatible.)
 
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YouYongku

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u can have more than 1 account but your psn plus should be on the 48 states.
reasoning they already give.
 

xiasuaykia

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Bottomline, US psn account is a MUST HAVE. Even if you don't play using US psn account, you still must have it just for buying the occasional bargain games. (Note if your game is Asia region don't pick up a US dlc even if it's dirty cheap on sale on US side cos very likely they are not cross-region compatible.)

Do you work in Sony? hell your knowledge surpasses wikipedia's! :s13:

Thank you so much PierceLee for the detailed break down! Appreciate it!
 

PierceLee

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Do you work in Sony?
Lol, no, it's from years of observing the pathetic decaying state Asia psn is in (doesn't help that organisationally Sony has it as Japan Asia, not Asia - you can guess how much the Japanese cares about Asia). But I often wish they would hire me to clean up their act, for the sake of all the suffering Asia users. One user once posted a comment on Asia psn blog quoting Square Enix's communication manager: "Asia psn likes to do their own thing". That's rather telling. (Btw, if you want to play Square Enix's new episodic Hitman game which was released in Mar, you won't find it on SG store. And I doubt SE doesn't want our money.)

It's obvious SG/Asia psn doesn't care about cleaning up their act, despite their mostly-inactive so-called communication manager (who doesn't communicate sh*t if his life depends on it) who copy-and-paste standard replies (which never actually answer any questions asked) saying "continue to support us and be witness our progress". Ok I'll give them some credit for actually running a few more sales and finally having a couple of pre-orders, but that has taken them like 10 years to take one step forward (and then two steps back).

Give up on Asia psn lah. Some of our old forumers actually had it in their sig: "Asia psn go eat sh*t and die" (paraphrased).
 

PierceLee

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When you subscribe to PS Plus, you get certain benefits. Some of these are only applicable to the account to subscribes while other benefits are also extended to other accounts on the same PS4. In other words, if you have SG and US psn accounts on the PS4, whichever account subscribes to PS+, the other account can enjoy some of the PS+ benefits too.

Benefits extended to other accounts:
- Access to online game play. So you only need 1 account with PS+, more than 1 account can play online. You don't need to subscribe to PS+ on every account that's playing online.

Benefits not extended to other accounts:
- Cloud save (automatic or manual upload of saved games to Sony's cloud storage for backup, and download if necessary).
- Monthly free games. Only the PS+ account can download the PS+ free games. However, once downloaded, other accounts on the PS4 can play those games too (with exceptions, like when the game is locked to a region or account).
- PS+ discounts during sales. Only the PS+ account can purchase sale items at special PS+ price (if applicable). Again, however, once downloaded other accounts can play (same exceptions).
- PS+ exclusive contents. Some can be used by other accounts after downloading (eg. demo, time trial, theme, DLCs), some cannot (eg. avatar).

So whether you subscribe to PS+ on SG or US psn account, that will depend on:
- Price. Obviously SG is cheaper, but that's a price difference of about S$2 per month (if you subscribe 12 months).
- Instant Game Collection, the monthly free games. Nowadays generally SG's choice of games follows US but often some games are late by a month or much more. It can be a frustrating wait cos you won't know whether it's just late or never, as many free games offered in US never make it to SG. Instead SG often gives Japanese language games or some cheapo games. On the other hand, some of the same free games come in English+Chinese (and some Japanese, Korean) version in SG, if that's important to you (you typically need to set up your PS4 language to be Chinese in order to play in Chinese).
- Are you going to buy digital games often? US runs many sales (weekly) and many items are offered with additional discounts to PS+ members. You don't have to subscribe to US PS+ to buy during most of these sales, except those exclusive to PS+ members. So it's a question of whether the additional discounts save you that S$2 per month.
- Which psn account do you use to play games? PS+ account can benefit from cloud save, other accounts cannot. But then you can always manually copy to USB storage anyway (PS3 does have some games that you cannot copy the save file to usb but can copy to cloud, don't know of any game like that on PS4 yet).

Note: For PS+ benefits to be extended and for purchased games to be playable by other accounts, the PS+ account must activate that PS4 as its 'primary PS4' (this shouldn't be a problem cos one of the set up steps asks you to do this).
 
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PierceLee

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I need to set the PS4 to Chinese in order to play in Chinese? Does that mean I have to set to Japanese in order to play Japanese as well?
Depends on the game...

- If a game is single language (eg. Chinese vers, or Japanese vers) then you don't have to set the language of the PS4 itself. The game will automatically run in the single language that it has, even if your PS4 is set to English.

- If a game is multi-language (eg. English/Chinese/Japanese vers) then typically you have to set the language of the PS4 to the one you want (Settings > Language > System Language), then the game will automatically use the language based on PS4 settings. (Hmm, I don't know what will happen if the game is for example Chinese/Korean but your PS4 is English. It will probably default to one of its supported languages.)

- If a game is an English version of a Japanese game, sometimes the publisher will just translate the text into English but leaves the Japanese voiceover as is (cheaper lah), then no need to set PS4 language, it's English text Japanese voice. Sometime the publisher will also dub the voice fully into English and only offer the English voice (funny Americans, can't read English subtitle, have to dub the voice, even if terribly English voice they also want that over the always fantastic Japanese voice acting), than also no need to set language. However sometime a good publisher will offer the players both voiceovers, then typically there will be an option within the game's menu for you to select, no need to change in PS4.

By the way, any opinions on Japanese PSN+?
Havent used it myself but I think it's good. They have a good choice of free games. Last month they had NBA and The Evil Within (we only had NBA). This month they have Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires, a full price AAA game (when we have Saints Row: Gat out of Hell, a budget price expansion).

However one important requirement is that you must know Japanese language. All the free games are Japanese language only (very rarely will you see any English version). Also I don't know if there is any good source to buy Japan PSN prepaid card at face value, it seems the merchants always mark up the price of Japan cards.
 

BassDude

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Hi, riding on this thread. How do I subscribe to PS plus. My credit card details does not seem to be accepted. Tried a few cards to no avail. TIA.
 

DrBaldwin

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Hi, riding on this thread. How do I subscribe to PS plus. My credit card details does not seem to be accepted. Tried a few cards to no avail. TIA.

I suppose you are subscribing to US PSN plus? I believe US PSN does not accept SG based credit cards, but you can purchase the US PSN Plus digital subscription via Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/1-Year-PlayS...=UTF8&qid=1468546963&sr=8-2&keywords=psn+plus

I followed Pierce's guide on GAX when I wanted to top up my US account wallet:
http://forums.gameaxis.com/showpost.php?p=21630120&postcount=2

In your case, as with purchasing of digital US PSN Store credits, for the billing address, you have to set to a "phoney" US address before the transaction can go through. Hence the billing address will not match your credit card billing address, but it will still be accepted by Amazon. I use my VPost USA address and it works.

Hope this helps.
 
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PierceLee

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I've ported that over here as well, it's in the Game Deals thread. Those new to US PSN/PS+ can read the first 2 posts. The 1st post gives some introduction to purchasing digital download games from another region's PSN store. The 2nd post lists some links to places selling PSN cards (for US PSN, go for Amazon or PC Game Supply, both linked in the post).
 

SMB1480B

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I don't have a US PSN now but I formerly have and here's what I observed:

In terms of currency well you don't really have much to lose and lots of SG gamers would choose to have US PSN due to it's exchange rate and also you get to play them first before europe and asia does. However if you want to buy hard copies they might not be flexible to ship them to you (In Sg) and this is what really turns me off. This is true if you have an XB account in the US, and like forza lots it can be a turn off (they don't allow their 'homegrown' products to be dispatched outside of US) or if you don't mind you can get from Amazon JP (be prepared as their pricing is way outdated) or play-asia but it is not applicable if you prefer to buy from the digital store straight.

I'm currently using UK PSN and I like it lots due to their flexibility (I don't mind the exchange rate) and I prefer them over the states due to their flexibility in dispatching items abroad (if you prefer having the hard copy) and they don't have an issue with dispatching XB1 accessories overseas (unlike the states where there are plenty of limitations for XB items.)
 

Shinobimaru

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Thanks PierceLee for guiding me here. Luckily have not done my subscription yet. From my understanding, for a 1 year subscription, does using a local card with a bogus address still works?

Edit: I'm referring subscription through the US PS Store.
 
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PierceLee

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From my understanding, for a 1 year subscription, does using a local card with a bogus address still works?
To subscribe to US PS+, you first need to create a US PSN account (see here). Then you need to purchase the actual subscription. There are 2 ways to do that:

(a) Purchase the subscription from US PSN store and paying from your US PSN store wallet. You can top up your US PSN store wallet by purchasing US PSN prepaid card (digital code) from Amazon (here) or from PC Game Supply (here). Redeem the code on US PSN store which adds to your wallet balance, then use the balance to purchase the subscription.

(b) Purchase the subscription (digital code) from Amazon (here) or from PC Game Supply (here). Then redeem the code on US PSN store.

If you purchase from Amazon, you can still use the fake US billing address thing and pay with SG creadit card. If you purchase from PC Game Supply, you can pay with SG Paypal (you need to enter real SG mobile phone number when creating PC Game Supply account, since they send you SMS with verification code for your first transaction).

Method (a) is more flexible, since you can still change your mind after purchasing the PSN prepaid card (the redeemed wallet balance can still be used to buy other things instead of PS+ subscription).

Edit: btw, 12-months US PS+ price is going to increase from US$49.99 to US$59.99 starting Sep 22. So if want to buy better get soon. Those who already have PS+ subscription can also buy some more, it will just add onto your current subscription period, you don't have to wait until current subscription expires before you add.
 
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PierceLee

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In terms of currency well you don't really have much to lose and lots of SG gamers would choose to have US PSN due to it's exchange rate and also you get to play them first before europe and asia does. However if you want to buy hard copies they might not be flexible to ship them to you (In Sg) and this is what really turns me off. This is true if you have an XB account in the US, and like forza lots it can be a turn off (they don't allow their 'homegrown' products to be dispatched outside of US) or if you don't mind you can get from Amazon JP (be prepared as their pricing is way outdated) or play-asia but it is not applicable if you prefer to buy from the digital store straight.
The region of the physical game disc doesn't have to match the region of the PSN account playing it though. Playstation games do not have region restriction (generally, except for a handful). Whether you buy game discs from Amazon US, Amazon JP, Amazon UK, Zavvi UK or local game shop doesn't matter really. Get from whichever region or source that is cheaper or accessible (ships to SG etc). Just be very careful with DLC compatibility (if it is a game you intend to buy DLCs, consider which region disc to buy).
 

Shinobimaru

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To subscribe to US PS+, you first need to create a US PSN account (see here). Then you need to purchase the actual subscription. There are 2 ways to do that:

(a) Purchase the subscription from US PSN store and paying from your US PSN store wallet. You can top up your US PSN store wallet by purchasing US PSN prepaid card (digital code) from Amazon (here) or from PC Game Supply (here). Redeem the code on US PSN store which adds to your wallet balance, then use the balance to purchase the subscription.

(b) Purchase the subscription (digital code) from Amazon (here) or from PC Game Supply (here). Then redeem the code on US PSN store.

If you purchase from Amazon, you can still use the fake US billing address thing and pay with SG creadit card. If you purchase from PC Game Supply, you can pay with SG Paypal (you need to enter real SG mobile phone number when creating PC Game Supply account, since they send you SMS with verification code for your first transaction).

Method (a) is more flexible, since you can still change your mind after purchasing the PSN prepaid card (the redeemed wallet balance can still be used to buy other things instead of PS+ subscription).

Edit: btw, 12-months US PS+ price is going to increase from US$49.99 to US$59.99 starting Sep 22. So if want to buy better get soon. Those who already have PS+ subscription can also buy some more, it will just add onto your current subscription period, you don't have to wait until current subscription expires before you add.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I have an US account currently. You mean we can't pay through paypal?

Since it's going to increase, might as well do a 2 years subscription in this case. :s13:
 

AikiBoy

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if I cant see DLC for tales of berseria mean I need a hk/tw acc to dl??:(
 

PierceLee

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if I cant see DLC for tales of berseria mean I need a hk/tw acc to dl??:(
Correct. Currently there is only Japanese and Chinese versions of ToB, neither is sold on SG psn store, so there is no corresponding DLCs on SG psn store. The Chinese version is only sold on HK/TW psn stores, so you have to download from there, using HK/TW account (and if the DLCs are not free, you will have to buy the corresponding PSN prepaid card to fund the purchase). The Japanese version isn't even on HK/TW, you will have to go to JP psn store for DLCs. Blame Bandai Namco for discriminating against the rest of Asia, as if no one else outside HK/TW can read Chinese, so they don't want to sell to us. (btw, wrong thread leh)
 

AikiBoy

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Correct. Currently there is only Japanese and Chinese versions of ToB, neither is sold on SG psn store, so there is no corresponding DLCs on SG psn store. The Chinese version is only sold on HK/TW psn stores, so you have to download from there, using HK/TW account (and if the DLCs are not free, you will have to buy the corresponding PSN prepaid card to fund the purchase). The Japanese version isn't even on HK/TW, you will have to go to JP psn store for DLCs. Blame Bandai Namco for discriminating against the rest of Asia, as if no one else outside HK/TW can read Chinese, so they don't want to sell to us. (btw, wrong thread leh)

oh well... LLST.

I cant blame them.
Kids nowadays can read Chinese meh? :s11: no market value. bring in does not mean can sell.
think read a paragraph from Chinese news can kill them let alone a Chinese game?

last time comic was translated to Chinese... now they mostly read English translation.
 
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