Want to pay for your play(station)?
The online rumour mill is speculating that Sony will announce a paid-for premium Playstation Network (PSN) service at the E3 conference in June.
According to VG247, its unconfirmed Sony sources said it will charge about $100 or so per year for membership of its extended services on PSN. These will include an updated music service like Spotify and Sony will give PSN subscribers one free PSN game a month.
The sources said that punters will get a choice of any PSN game they can play for free. So we're not talking about full retail games that cost up to $100 to buy, but cheaper games that only cost up to $20.
All of this is also based on proposed/rumoured UK pricing, so local figures could well shift significantly once you figure in the DownUnder tax we seem to pay on just about everything.
While punters can pay for downloaded games and films via PSN, the basic service will still be free to sign up - gamers can play over PSN for nothing. If Sony makes its mooted premium PSN feature an obligatory upgrade, it could mean that Sony's PSN, like Microsoft's X-Box Live service, intends to charge all its punters once they've gotten hooked up and signed on the dotted line.
Sony has already been caught off-guard with rumour teasers about an entire overhaul of its PSN services. If this is announced at E3 in mid-June we won't be too surprised. However, we'd love to see more details on how Sony intends to stop lag issues if you can stream and game simultaneously.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012