When they package it in Station Access, I will pay... but I will be in EQ2 or Planetside. lol!!

 See, that's the problem with saying always.  In 1994, Nintendo was always going to be on top and cartridges were always the way to go.  Last year, GTAIV and DMC4 was always going to be an exclusive.  

 If you want PSN to be as good as Live, you're going to have to pay.  Maybe if Sony was rolling in money from the PS3 they could provide a free service, but whether you like the PS3 or not, we all know Sony is not wallowing in money from the PS3.

Now the interesting question is, if PSN does become a pay service would you pay for Live and PSN assuming they are both equal?

Me, I probably wouldn't because I am in fact cheap. I can stomach paying for one service, but I don't think I would like paying for two services. It would be interesting to see what happens to the Live and PSN populations if this did happen.

I think they will definitely charge. It costs a lot of money to have the type of system they are touting. That is why MS charges, servers, and space and all of the other necessary hardware for all of the features is expensive. That is why Nintendo has not shown any of those features and that is why they are using Gamespy. This ensures they have as little cost as possible so sales from the vc channel can easily support the online system.

Quite simply PSN can't ever get as popular as XBL because Microsoft has been paying through the nose to secure titles and research and all that other good stuff. The kind of spending that Sony just can't compete with. C'mon they spent 50 million dollars on 2 pieces of episodic content for GTA. Bought out an entire island in Second Life. Spent some 30 mill on the Immersion tech suit and bought a stake in the company along with that.

Besides that Sony couldn't even compete with the Xbox online features last gen, they are just playing catch-up now. I don't think it's possible for Sony to beat Microsoft there and if they do... then heck yea you will see a fee of some kind because they would have to have had gone on one heck of a spending spree to catch up. Either that or you just won't get an online game. That's one of the reasons for the fee, to encourage every single game to create online content for the system.

This is the kind of things where... if you've got nothing better to say, don't say anything.
There's really no point for Sony rep to announce this "bad" news.

It's free now. Let it be. Just shut up about it whether it will possibly be free or not in the future.
Announce that you're charging when you are charging.

As for whether it will always be free. There's not such thing as 100% sure even if the CEO said so. CEO could be fired, too. If there's money to be made. It will be charged. It's just business.

I doubt they'll start charging anytime soon though. Not until the sales improve.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if they started charging after Christmas as a special way to say thanks.

I thought Playstation Network was to be funded via advertising and marketing partners? Charging for it would be a bad move, unless it was for an ad-free account with no other differences.

Also, my opinion is that they will not charge for it anytime soon.  This will cause Xbox Live to drop its subscription fee.  As a result of that, Sony won't have the option to charge in the future either.  All gamers win.

why is it trolling?
there's nothing wrong if you have to pay for a better service and i don't think it's a bad news

when i buy a PS3, i won't mind paying (as long as it's reasonable) the online service if it's as good as xbox live.

Well, I personally take issue with buying an online-only game like Warhawk and then having to pay a fee on top of that to play it. Warhawk isn't an MMO where that sort of thing is routine. It would be like buying Starcraft and having to pay extra to use Battle.net or buying a Quake game and having to pay an extra subscription fee for online play. The only people who have stuff like that done to them and smile about it are Xbox owners. The first time I played against others online was through a PC, so I guess it's been ingrained in me that this sort of thing should be free with your purchase of the game.