Playstation Network ( PSN )
PlayStation Network, often abbreviated to PSN in the gaming community, is Sony's free online service provided for use with their PlayStation 3 (PS3) and PlayStation Portable (PSP) video game consoles. As of February 14, 2008, there are over 2.9 million registered PlayStation Network accounts in North America. Registration is performed via the PlayStation 3 console or a personal computer. Two types of accounts can be created: Master accounts and Sub accounts. The Master account, as the name suggests, allows full access to all settings including parental control but the master has to be over the age of 18 to create an account. Sub accounts can subsequently be created with desired restrictions set and monitored by the master account holder.
Since master/sub accounts are not linked with the PS3 serial number, which allows users to buy and sell used consoles, they can be used with different physical consoles as a guest user. Therefore a single PS3 console can have multiple master accounts. A PSN registration is required for the PlayStation Store access and a guest user's account can be used to download PSN Store purchased items to a friend's console, but an account is not required to access the PS3's own web browser. The ability to use PlayStation Store content licenses for re-download is limited to five different PlayStation 3 consoles.
The PS3 console has been launched in most areas as of March 23, 2007. Some sites speculated that potential PS3 customers from outside of Japan and the US would be able to pre-register their favorite usernames online at the PlayStation Store. This proved to be true, as European gamers were able to register prior to the March 23 release using their PC, giving the added benefit of being able to quickly pre-register their details and more importantly, secure their chosen and world unique username.