The service offered to you during online gaming is entirely by your ISP, not MS. Its a fact that you are ignoring since a long time in this thread. Other services they offer like achievement etc they offer it for free. Cross game chat is also very less taxing on MS when it comes to servers etc.

So yes, its not a service offered by MS. MS doesn't have anything to do with your online play except for exclusives.

OF course I can't.

MS has locked your online game play in the OS itself, of course you need XBL to play online. Ask yourself this, do you need a service to play online? Have you played online on PC? So many games don't need a central hub like PSN or steam or XBL to play online. F2P games are a good example as well, and they definitely incur more expenses than MS does in providing online gaming to you.

This is the reason why GFWL is free right now. It couldn't monopolize itself like it has on Xbox. With the xbox 360 MS now has a platform where there is no competition in the platform itself, and hence can afford to put a price on online gaming.

If steam was to generate heavy losses, they will most certainly generate even more losses if they were to charge for online gaming. Because steam doesn't do anything when you game online, except for the extra features like achievements.

And why does it matter if something is a handheld, online gaming is still online gaming, it still is the same concept.

I wasn't talking about XBL. I was talking about online gaming. Its a service provided to you by your ISP, not MS. Also the devs. XBL is a service provided to you by MS.

Seeing how large PSN has become and it's growth it's likely to become a paid service.. someone will pay for the security, maintance, bandwidth, r&d, etc for it... and I don't think Sony will be picking up that bill..

Indeed, as a business decision it's sound to charge, as a consumer (well I'm not really bothered) but I can totally see how many don't like it or agree with it.

But yeah, it is a service, I'm pretty much done arguing with this guy though, if Sony had any sense about them they would charge next gen, because they can, and they need the money. Common sense.

and Playstation gamers will pay for it...... yeah how bout no, M$ only charges for Live because Xbox gamers will pay for it, Sony can wrap up next gen for sure if they even consider chargeing for online gaming

like others have said, online will remain free, and plus will get better

This is so true.

Either SONY are incredibely generous or incredibly stupid. Personally I think it's a mix of the two.

Gotta disagree with you on this Jay520. To say that all companies only care about their customers money is wrong. Not every company's only genuine care is to make money. I mean if that was true some industries wouldnt exist. Take for example a small game developer company, whose primary goal is to make good games, making money is just the means to be able to do what they want to do.

I think most industries which are not highly profitable are a result of companies wanting to provide a specific service or make a particular product to consumers. I would say the genuine care is to then provide that service. Things get messy when a company gets bigger, and investors get involved (now their only care would be to make money) companies then have to appease those investors but also please the consumers and stil be able to do the things they want to do. It becomes complicated.

Either way, its not as simple as to say a company's only genuine care is money.