As is Xbox Live. Difference is the cost of the free games makes up for the price. You don't get any decent free Games with Gold so they're really just scamming you.

And I have a PC, but that's not the disscusion here.

They are scamming me? I didn't pay for Gold in hopes of getting free games. That has just become a bonus.

Like I said before, the masses don't want Sony's hand picked games. They would prefer to play online gaming free. The people getting scammed are the ones that still think Sony is offering online play for free. Bait and switch, my friend.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

i am sorry.

Yes, I'm afraid: they are charging you for (and only) a feature that is free elsewhere.

And like I said in reply to that, if the "masses" were faced with a choice between a service that offers multiplayer, free games and content, beta access, Cloud storage, free game trials, against a service that only offers multiplayer for the same price, what would the masses pick?

They would. That doesn't have anything to do with my posts though. I never denied that. Seeing as neither service offers such, your argument is irrelevant. You keep on bringing up "they" despite me already reiterating that I don't care what the "masses" want.

I don't think anyone thinks that. And if they do they might be pleasantly surpsrised to find that their being gently nudged into joining a service that benifits everyone. :)

Free monthly games and hundreds saved with discounts.

I won't renew my sub if there are no games in the instant game collection that I care about. But I will renew if I like those games. I don't care that much about online. I wouldn't pay extra for it. I got plus only because of the free games. Only thing I use regurlarly is youtube and I don't even need plus for that. That's why I peraonally don't complain. I get what I want. Sure, I'm playing BF4 and GTA online right now, but I really wouldn't pay 5 Euros per month just to do that. I would instead just play some SP games. But since the value of plus is so awesome (for me at least, EU ps plus rocka so damn hard) I keep on renewing my sub and I play online.

For me is the Instant game collection, i have access to around 24 games by now, thats US$1440 on games for US$100 (2 years been subscribed), and i dont mind that i lose them when i stop paying since most i played them until i got saturated or i bough the physical disk, so in a way is like the best type of demos ever.

How convenient. You read one line and ignore the rest, even though the rest addressed everything you said, point by point. You original point was that when Sony started charging for online, Sony fans would immediately do a 180 and be ok with it. That was proven false. Not to mention that about half my response was specficially about your original post. 

Then you speculated that free games wasn't enough to draw in gamers, so they started to charged, to which I rebutted (and apparently was the only sentence you read) with the more sensible answer: they're doing it because they saw a successful business model and wanted to reap some of those benefits. 

Nothing I've said in response to you in this thread has been off topic to the post I was responding to. You just choose not to acknowledge the points I'm making. People tend to do that when they realize they're in the wrong.

Steam has a few, but internet providers around the world have Steam Servers as do the game developers.

However, the advantage of letting game developers and internet providers provide servers is mostly one of costs, it's far cheaper for an internet provider to grab data off a server that's right next to it's Content delivery network than having to grab data from across the planet.
And because there are far more servers and networks supporting it all, you get lower latency and more redundancy.

And because my ISP hosts Steam content and because Australian Internet connections have data caps, my ISP in it's mighty and wise wisdom made Steam data-free, provided I am grabbing content from an Australian server and not one overseas. (Which you can do via a Steam Filter to limit the servers you can get stuff from.)

Converesly, Internode/iiNet/Westnet/Netspace/Adam Internet and whatever else other provider iiNet has gobbled up also provides data-free Xbox Live! They achieved that by using a very expensive piece of equipment that inspects the packets coming off the Akami network that Microsoft uses.

Unfortunatly, no such thing like that exists for the Playstation Network in Australia, so if you intend to go completely digital... The Playstation is probably the worst console to opt for here.

So when do Sony fans stop being hypocrites? When they start setting themselves on fire in protest? Because apparently the majority of them voicing their displeasure over the decision isn't enough.

It's almost as if some people want there to be a double standard.