Hopes it really is just spam.

[Unknown Entity]

I signed on to PSN this morning to be greeted by a mail from a friend of mine saying that the Playstation Network will no longer be free to use if you want to play online. Something like Xbox Live.

Now, I've done a search on google, and it appears I'm not the only person to have received this message. I've tried a few sites, and none of them are giving any straight answers. I looked on the Offical Site, and nothing has been said about this change, not even a warning that there is spam going around. Also, I'm pretty sure that if there was going to be a big change on PSN like this, they'd have e-mailed us directly.

**Just convinced myself it is spam. Feels like I've just spammed myself. Thinks of a way this could be turned into a discussion.** >>;

Anyway, if it's true or not, has anyone else received this message? And what would you do if they started charging for PSN use?

I'd be pretty pissed, like many users. You don't tell someone a service you're offering is free, only to decide that you're going to start charging. Besides, they can't charge for something that is nowhere near as good as Xbox Live.

[Jin]

I haven't gotten any message. I would wager it's spam. Sony is a stupid company, but I can't see them being THAT stupid. PSN isn't good enough to pay for (in my opinion, neither is Live).

[Pete]

It probably is spam. I think if it were to be legit, you'd get an email from the company itself, with like an @sony.something type of line in it. I know that Xbox Live doesn't send me any messages via Live, but it'll send confirmation emails if I purchase points or if they will be doing updates or anything. It'll always either be @microsoft.com or @email.xbox.com.

And Jin, for a tiny bit over 4 dollars a month (if you opt for the yearlong contract) for dedicated servers and fairly organized online gameplay, I'm pretty happy with xbox live. the only thing that sucks is that you don't get access to regular internet, but I don't really see the need.

[Jin]

I'm not saying that Live is not worth it to many, nor am I saying that it is equal to PSN (quite the contrary, it's certainly superior to PSN), but I'm old fashioned. I don't like the idea of having subscription fees to play my games and adding facebook and twitter support won't change my mind on that.

[Pete]

True, I'll def give you that one. You would think that paying 60 for a game, along with let's just say $300 for a system, should entitle you to playing online for free. I can understand paying extra for DLC, since that is more of a game, but paying to play supported features does seem a little messed up. FFXI aside, at least it's not a subscription fee per game.

[Jin]

Mind you, it's not as if PSN is actually free. Publishers (or sometimes developers) have to pay for bandwidth something like $0.25 per gigabyte downloaded, which can add up. Let's say publisher X puts out some free DLC equal to exactly one gigabyte and 1 million people download it. If my math's right (which is always questionable), that's $250,000 that the publisher has to pay in order to get that free DLC out there. Naturally, this results in fewer publishers willing to put their products online for download (be they full games or DLC), so I suppose it does come back on the consumer's shoulders in some form. Nothing's free I suppose.