Yes I do, at the very least.

The USA is huge and our population is spread out across the countryside. Half of us are live in rural areas that are hours away from metro areas. Many are still stuck with dialup. Some opt for satalite internet, but it's uplink is too slow for gaming. Some are lucky to have DSL, but it's the slowest DSL you can imagine and only barely good enough for online gameplay but not even good enough to stream 1080p youtube videos without constance buffering.

To lay the lines all across the country would takes billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of workers and still takes many years to complete. Few companies are willing to make that kind of investment because their returns would not be worth it. It's cheap and easy to string a mile of fiber down the street to 500 apartment tenants, but it takes far more money and effort to lay 200 miles of line to get to 200 houses who may not even all want to pay for it.

Your op reminds me of Netflix. Netflix states that more people started watching Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, etc because they saw the first few season on Netflix and started watching it on TV. While it might not always be the case (considering I will never get cable) it probably has some backing. Exposing people to content for "free" (subscription fee) might allow for an increase interest from consumers for future content.

Got LBP for free, purchased LBP2. Got Dead Nation for free, purchased the add-on.

And stuff.

Hits are still good on hulu.com. They still make a lot of money off of people being on the site and watching those shows. It also shows what is more popular than another.

The OP has merit that a subscription based service will encourage people to try things they may not have otherwise. Don't see how anyone can even argue the point and there really is no point to the Live comparisons as it has no relevance to the original post. Its definitely a marketing tool that other companies will be studying imo.

Not following your train of thought completely.  What point are you trying to make with hulu/hulu+?  I still have a Hulu+ membership but there are only a few shows that I watch on there (Parks and Recreation, The Office (U.S.), The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Family Guy, South Park, Bob's Burgers, American Dad, and Cleveland Show).  Hulu is desperately missing Workaholics, Tosh.O (they made it web only content I believe now), Archer, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, etc...  I value my Netflix membership more than Hulu+ and that isn't saying too much since Netflix has gone downhill since losing the Stars and other contracts.

Another form of revenue on the hulu website is from hits. It shows whats popular, and they also make added revenue from Plus. Thats my point.

Ah, okay.  I do agree with you that exposing people to earlier content can help out future sales.  I was just not too sure where you were going with the previous comment.  So in regards to the whole op I would have to say PS+ is a big plus for Sony.