According to a recent presentation given by Kaz Hirai (reported by GameSpot) , Sony will be adding a "premium level" subscription service to the PlayStation Network sometime in 2010. Listed as a "key advantage of the Playstation 3", this new premium service will offer PS3 usersyet to be known "premium content and other services".
Now, what does premium content means? There’s already tons of premium content on PSN that you can buy (animated themes, Qore subscription, movies, etc) so offering an even bigger premium service could only imply that the remaining part of PSN (i.e: online play) would no longer be free.
Of course, the "announcement" came as an unpleasent message to the PS3 community so Kaz Hirai had to claify that the current PSN model, as we know it, will remain free and that none of the recently added features (Facebook, NetFlix) will require a fee.
With PS3 sales (and the number of active PSN accounts) increasing, the true question is: can Sony really continue to offer a free service?
We’ll see in 2010...