I hope not one of the biggest reasons I respect Sony is because they have retained free online gaming. I wonder if a charge for psn would cause a huge backlash from Sony fans or would most of them except it and pay. But if they do charge they better add cross game chat and other features.

That's last years rumor, and it turned out to be playstation plus.

Sony would sooner charge game companies for hosting their servers then its customers. Just as they charge publishers a psn bandwidth fee for dlc and demos. Hence less demos on psn.

I can't see sony suddenly chargning for PSN in the middle of the generation. I think sony will hold off until PS4 to start charging on PSN.

Chocoloco and Mchaza  hit it on the head. Sony has spent so much money on the marketing, and by saying that "PSN is free". If Sony were to suddenly charge for online, fans, devs, and the general public would be alienated. Chances are, it will stay free.

I wonder what Sony would have to say about their main rival randomly telling consumers something that is just a wild guess? Because I know one thing if the roles were reversed Microsoft would be straight on the phone to their lawyers to sue Sony.

*gets out sugar popcorn*

If they did start charging for online play it would piss off a lot of people including myself. From the start of this gen Sony kept reassuring people that PSN would stay free and if they went back on that promise people won't be happy. I'm a Plus subscriber and I've no problem paying any subscription fee thats worth it except if that fee is to play games online that you already payed 50 euros for.

Most likely the MS employee was tryna make a sale but Sonys a buisness and at the end of the day if they think they could get everyone to switch to an online subscription service without doing damage to the company then they will charge for online.

If that happens I'll just start pirating like the hackers. I buy 20 games a year. I've more than covered for an online subscription

Somehow I'm amused by this. A Microsoft customer service representative knows about Sony's plans for spring 2011...
I think I'm calling Sony now to ask them what MS plans to unveil at E3 2011.

No seriously, I guess (I'm actually quite sure) that this representative is just lying.

 He made up a lie to get you to not cancel your Xbox Live subscription and it sounds like it worked.

That is what I assumed as I said in my post. Still it makes me wonder if it is the lie of one man or a policy of a company.