Despite the fact that Microsoft's Xbox Live charges gamers $50 annually for online gameplay, most players today are still likely to tell you that Xbox Live is a superior experience. Sony, however, has certainly made numerous improvements to its PlayStation Network, which remains completely free. Wrapping up our conversation with Rob Dyer, SCEA Senior Vice President of Publisher Relations, we asked the executive about PSN's growth, and particularly how third parties feel about the network. 

“When I first started here [at SCEA] two years ago, it was slow and cumbersome and we were really struggling to put any kind of a dent into Xbox Live," Dyer admitted. But PSN has come a long way in just a couple years.  Dyer continued, "What we're now finding is we're at par and offering as good if not a better experience; and publishers are putting a lot of content on our system now that they can't put on Xbox Live. And having been a publisher on the other side, I can say that PSN is a lot more egalitarian. It's easier to get stuff up, it's easier to get it promoted and easier to get it to your consumer, versus what you have with Xbox Live. It's not as big a sales pitch as it once was, particularly when you saw the results we announced coming out of December. We're just going from strength to strength, especially with as many consoles as we're selling; people are hooking it up to the network and they're downloading stuff. It's simple math – the more you sell, the more people get online, the more PSN content you'll sell."

Downloadable content (DLC) is becoming a bigger and bigger component of the industry, as publishers look to bring in additional digital revenue and extend the lives of their retail games. This is one area where Dyer feels PSN definitely gives third parties an advantage of Xbox Live. "If you're making a game and you want to have DLC that you can send out to everybody on a system, if you're with Sony you can do that because everybody has a hard drive [with PS3]. Microsoft's consumer base, on the other hand, can't download everything. So if I'm a developer, which system should I make the content for? And look at the results for the GTA [episodic] pack... candidly, that's why it's coming out on disc, because a lot of people couldn't access it," he said. "So when people come to us, they can provide us with exclusive content and know that it's going to get to a lot more users because our machine has that hard drive. They don't have to create a lowest common denominator; they can do what they want it to do.”

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/sony-psn-is-a-lot-more-egalitarian-than-xbox-live/

^This right here

As the PSN numbers also count accounts made online and used on PS forums and also since everyone has a psn account for everyday of the year....it easily has more people using it.

Some nice spin you got there, not matter what MS does it right and no matter what Sony does it wrong.

you can't hate Major Nelson. You just can't.

He is the probably the only unbiased guy in this industry. He owns a Wii and a PS3 as well and even promotes them from time to time. They talked about BluRay players and he said "Why not get the one that plays Uncharted?" and he said "congratulations to my friends at Naughty Dog for delivering a great game!" or he made an interview with the developers of scribblenauts on his show, because he liked the concept of this game and they are from Seattle, too. Keep in mind this is a Xbox 360 show normally, but he talks about their competitors in a very natural way. They discussed iPhone Apps, the iPad, Wii Motion + etc etc

He simply is a big gamer and one of the few you can listen to without a facepalm, because of this PR talk.

So, keep on hating Greenberg, Kaz Hirai, Reggie and some more, but not the only normal guy in this industry.

That's like saying Sony should have saved money and not included wireless in the console... after all, not everyone wants to go online.

The more peripherals included in a console purchase, the higher likelyhood of their use. To round out their "online experience" that they wanted to push so much, a microphone should have come with the console. After all, isn't their tagline "It does everything."?

I would also like to add Sony included everything else in the console why not add a cheap $5 mic?

^This right here

As the PSN numbers also count accounts made online and used on PS forums and also since everyone has a psn account for everyday of the year....it easily has more people using it.