How To Play PS5 Games Early

PS5 console
PS5

So, you’ve pre-ordered a digital PS5 game via the PlayStation Store, and all you’re left doing is watching and waiting until that unlock countdown clock reaches zero. That wait can be even more excruciating when it’s a game that you’ve been looking forward to for a while, and you know that the game is already finished and you just have to keep on waiting. Is there any way to play PS5 games early by changing your region or timezone, then?

The answer is yes, you can play PS5 games early if you’ve bought them digitally, but it’s a lot more complicated than you might think.

On Xbox, simply changing your timezone to somewhere like New Zealand will allow you to bypass a countdown until a game releases, but there’s no such trick on PS5. Simply changing your storefront won’t work; you need to make a whole new PSN NZ account.

 

How To Make A New PSN NZ Account

Players will have to make a New Zealand PSN account as that region is ahead of everywhere else, then buy the game on that account by using New Zealand-specific gift cards, as your usual debit/credit card will not work.

This means that you will not be able to have your trophy information on your main account, and you will have to re-add your friends on this new account to play with them. You will also have to sign up to PlayStation Plus again if you want to play a game together that isn’t free-to-play.

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide:

1. Turn on your PS5 and select New User.
2. Choose Create A User. Accept the agreement, then ignore signing in to PSN just yet.
3. Select New to PlayStation Network? Create an Account.
4. For the purposes of playing PS5 games early, make sure you select New Zealand as your region in the account creation process.
5. Enter all of the basic details as normal, but when it comes to location, choose anywhere within New Zealand by randomly googling an NZ location.
6. Make a new email address that isn’t connected to a PSN ID, then enter that into the field.
7. Complete the rest of the basic details, accept agreements, and you’re in.

As for actually buying games from other storefronts, you will have to buy a digital gift card from somewhere like Amazon for that specific region — you will need New Zealand gift cards. Once you have been sent your code, you can easily redeem it on the PlayStation Store and add funds to your account.

All being well when setting up your new account, you should be able to buy and download games from other regions and play your PS5 games early.

 

Is Sony Okay With This?

Sony tends to be very strict when it comes to exploiting any of their systems and using loopholes to get around stuff, and while we’ve not personally heard anything about anyone’s accounts getting banned for changing PSN regions to play PS5 games early, it does go against their TOS to make an account with false information, which is basically what you’re doing when you make an account for another region. Discretion is advised.

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