As most people here know already, I am a long time Playstation fan. I've also owned every Nintendo handhelds (and Wii) and I'm a big fan of Fire Emblem and Advance Wars,  but my lead platforms have always been PS home consoles since the first one. Also bought PSP, Vita, and recently upgraded from the PS4 to the Pro.

Anyway, I moved from France to Japan last year, I didn't play for several months, but I bought the PS4 Pro God of War bundle and started gaming pretty heavily again. One of the game I play the most is Uncharted 4 Multiplayer, and I think I'm a pretty good player (attained Master rank as a solo player back when the ranked games were team deathmatch). But since I started playing it again here, half of the games I did were terrible: almost impossible to hit a moving target, impossible to avoid grenades or mines, impossible to kill people on a cliff, and without trying to be too proud, it seemed like pretty heavy lag (killing a guy and being killed by him 2 seconds later felt weird).

I noticed that I was matched mostly with European players, sometimes even the same ones as last year in France, and I first thought that it was because too few people were playing in Asia. But when I bought Soul Calibur 6 and was also matched against European players only, with terrible connection (even with very high internet speed), something felt very wrong and I went online to confirm it. So yes, Playstation Network do not care about your actual location for matchmaking, only about the location affiliated to your PSN account. "Alright then, let's just use my JP account!" I thought. And all of a sudden, all my Uncharted 4 games went a lot smoother, no lag anymore, and I even found games more easily. One big problem though: I lost all of my unlocked content, even everything I bought for real money. Which I understand, because it's another account.

I've been very disappointed about the lack of local matchmaking and the loss of my progression, but decided that a way better gameplay was worth a few euros, and I bought 20 euros of MP coins to unlock the characters, weapons and skills I used (with coins left, I thought), because I don't want to do hundreds of games to unlock everything again. However, the coins never appeared on my Uncharted account. So I contacted Sony support to ask for help, and for a refund if it couldn't work. I looked on internet and found an answer from Naughty Dog, saying that "Unlockable content from a region can only be used with a game from this region, even physical". So, I can buy the coins but it can't be used in the game. Naughty Dog also advice to ask Sony for a refund in that case, which I did. Their answer has been clear: no, they won't refund me. If I want to play the games I bought in Europe in good conditions, even if I am willing to pay for in-game transactions, I have to buy every game again, or start everything from the beginning.

This is obviously very disappointing, and unacceptable from my point of view. They offer a lackluster service locked between countries, without even a local matchmaking option, and block any moves between region behind a "pay everything again" paywall. Between this and the recent news about heavy censorship (not a fan of ecchi games, but I can imagine a Nier Automata 2 with a censored character...), maybe this could be the right time to change my main platform. If I have to buy every MP game I own a second time or start them again from the beginning, I might as well put this money and time on another platform and new games. I didn't buy the Switch yet, but could be interested, or I could upgrade my PC. 

Any thought on this? Advice? How are international transfers managed on other platforms?

Have you tried contacting them directly about this issue? If they confirm it is an issue for matchmaking have you tried asking if they'll change your PSN accounts region to JPN?

If there actually is a matchmaking problem, it will be on a game-by-game basis, as some games will use there own matchmaking systems, rocket league/fortnite for example.

And yes DLC for games only works if purchased on an account with the same region as the game.

And yet, this is exactly what happens on Soul Calibur 6. The matchmaking region is showed, and I am in Europe on my EU account, in Asia on my JP account. Impossible to change that, and impossible to look for a local matchmaking. All of my opponents on my EU account are from EU (shown when the match starts), with 1/5 connection. All of my opponent on my JP account are from Asia, with 4 or 5/5 connection and no disconnection like on my EU account. I can't find a match if I search for a 3/5 connection on my EU account (even after 1 hour...), but it takes just seconds on my JP account. Other players, on SC or other games, have the same issues, with usually the same answer: it's region locked.

Example: https://talk.turtlerockstudios.com/t/playstation-4-region-matchmaking/54040

Or on Playstation forums: https://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PS4/How-is-your-server-region-selected/td-p/24120827

Other Playstation forum thread: https://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/GT-Sport/How-to-change-region/td-p/25338750

Yes, sometimes I was with people from other countries on UC4. But the usual was with European players (can talk to them with mic), and I can assure you that the experience with my JP account is in another league compared to the EU account. Less loading times, 5 bars on my reception on matchmaking screen, and smooth gameplay. And like I said, I was always with the same players on my EU account (the userbase is not that huge), never saw them on the JP account.

What is the country of your UC disc? Some games will allow the setting, but maybe some versions are not localized the same way (if there is not a lot of players in the region for example).

I'm pretty sure you can't change your region, it's an usual issue with PSN. And changing the region would surely affect my entire games library...

Sure, some games will allow players to change the setting themselves, but not all of them.

My issue is not even about DLC but online currency. They let me buy it from the game on my JP account, but I can't use it, and I can't even get a refund. It's ridiculous, they shouldn't allow the purchase in that case.

Looked into it and it doesn't seem changing your original accounts region is possible. However for the vast majority of games it shouldn't be a problem. Your EU games and EU DLC will work with your japanse PSN account. There's very few games that lock the DLC to the specific account, most DLC can be used by any account on your primary console. The Crew, Steep (and microtranscation currencies) are exceptions to this rule, as they tie DLC purchases to the PSN account and aren't shared with other users on your primary console.

Yeah, that is annoying. Most stuff will work except currency, for those games you'd have to own them on the Japanese account.

So you really like Uncharted multiplayer.... and your issue is if your useing a european account, you get matched with europeans, even when your liveing abroad.

1) Do you know if Nintendo or MS does this differntly? becasue they probably dont.
2) How will you enjoy Uncharted multiplayer, if you switch platforms?


also the problem:
"I lost all of my unlocked content, even everything I bought for real money. Which I understand, because it's another account."

Its understandable, its a differnt account.
Okay you seem fine with it, and understand it.... then why would you jump platforms because of it?

Microsoft allows you to change your account region, PSN does not.

Moving countries shouldn't be a massive issue, it's something that needs to be fixed.

Well, a Switch is a great decision and will offer you great gaming experiences. But one thing: if you are disappointed by Sonys networking services, than Nintendo isn't better. There are many reasons for Nintendo, but their online services ain't one of them. This as a word of warning. But yeah, Fire Emblem is due in a few months and looks gorgeous, and while no advance wars you have quite some 3rd-party strategy games on the Switch, so it might be a worthy console for you.

I said "lead platform", doesn't mean that I will stop playing PS games, just that I can wait a long time before buying the PS5, and start playing multiplatform games on other platforms instead of Playstation. And I'm asking to other fans how it's handled elsewhere, because if I remember correctly Nintendo did it better on the Switch (it's a non-issue on PC usually).

And it's not about the issue itself, it's about the support. "Yeah, we offered you to buy online currency that you can't use. Too bad, you just have to buy the game again on your new country, and you'll surely have to buy the currency again because you didn't buy it on the right game". That's a crappy policy, associated to a lackluster regions management. Losing everything because I moved is already annoying, having absolutely no support at all is even worse. Add that to the worrying new censorship policy, and you can understand why I'm at least thinking about other options for my future purchases.

Yes, playstation regional locks can be very annoying. When I bought my PS3 in 2012 and started making my account and turned out that my country (Latvia) wasn't on their list, so I chose to register as USA account. At first I thought I made the right decision because USA has a bit better digital deals, but later I learned that digital DLC doesn't work with my physical 'european' games. They actually refunded the 5 bucks that I had spent on a DLC lol but I have a bunch of physical games that I would like to buy digital DLC for but I can't.