The battle for console supremacy is fought on many fronts and one of those is that of the services that console manufacturers make available along with their devices. On one hand, Microsoft has a wide array of offers, like Netflix, which can stream movies directly to the Xbox 360, but the company chooses to ask for payment related to these services.
Sony, on the other hand, is offering more things for free, hoping that gamers will be attracted to its services.
But Sony Computer Entertainment could be about to make a change in its pricing model. A company questionnaire that has been circulated amongst PlayStation gamers in Asia asks whether they would be prepared to pay a monthly fee to get unlimited access to PlayStation Portable and to PlayStation 1 games. This does not mean that the company has decided to make a change, only that it is taking this option into consideration.
Xbox Live comes in two flavors. You can sign up to Xbox Live Silver for free, which means that you download the content that is available on Xbox Live Marketplace while also being able to enter a voice chat with your buddies. Xbox Live Gold, which is 7.99 dollars a month in North America, additionally offers support for video chat and for online multiplayer.
The PlayStation Network, which is equivalent in many ways to Xbox Live, does not require a subscription for multiplayer games and all the other services that are provided through it are free.
Some Xbox 360 users have been complaining about the fact that they need to pay to play multiplayer sessions, which they can do for free when they buy a PC game or a PlayStation 3 game. Microsoft says that in order to provide the service that it does at a high level of quality it must charge a fee. And the questionnaire is a pretty big sign that Sony could soon go for a subscription fee for some PSN services.
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