Sony’s policy of providing free network services for PlayStation 3 owners looks to have a bright future, with Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida confirming the company is looking to bring further diversified functionality to the console.
"We’re more open about approaching and bringing services in to PS3 and PSP," he stated. "We can’t support all the needs of the consumer and there are great companies providing services on the PC already – so we’re very open to provide the opportunity to those companies to reach our user base as well."
No mention of any specific examples was stated, but with free Internet play and music video streaming in place it seems Sony will be looking to branch out to more outlandish content.
"There are things we’re looking at, and learning how we can provide a service without people having to pay," he continued. "But we still get our operation running with funding from somewhere so that we can maintain the level of quality we want." Advertising looks set to play a big part here.
"We like to provide as many services as possible for free – we already provide our network access for gameplay for free – and the interesting thing about the network side and the Internet business is that there’s a variety of revenue sources."
If they keep this up, we’ll have no reason to own a PC in a couple of years time.