It’s easy nowadays to get all bent out of shape about companies charging money for things that should be free, or charging more than is reasonable simply because they can. Case in point, does an Xbox Live Gold subscription really need to be $50 a year? Perhaps when the service started this was reasonable, but now that ads are slapped onto every corner of the service and Microsoft continues to make money hand over fist with the constant flood of downloaded content, it’s starting to seem more and more like this "entry fee" is simply there because Microsoft knows you’ll pay it to play online and have first crack at the new stuff.

Sony, on the other hand doesn’t like this model, and company president Shuhei Yoshida is more than happy to talk up the virtues of a free system. According to Yoshida, there are plenty of ways to run a respectable service without charging users a dime.

"We like to provide as many services as possible for free - we already provide our network access for gameplay for free - and the interesting thing about the network side and the Internet business is that there’s a variety of revenue sources," he said. "Not necessarily getting people to pay, but with advertising and so on.

"Those are things we’re looking at, and learning how we can provide a service without people having to pay - but we still get our operation running with funding from somewhere so that we can maintain the level of quality we want."

The only downside to Sony’s current model is that it seems like connectivity and stability issues are fairly common for many PS3 owners, so much so that they may have to sign off and on numerous times before securing a stable connection. But you get what you pay for, so it’s kind of hard to come down on Sony for having a functional, if slightly flawed, service that doesn’t cost a thing. If the company continues to improve the experience however, bringing it on par with Xbox Live, then they will have a formidable online presence indeed.