Yes, this was a little sneaky, but they asked very direct questions comparing it to Xbox Live Gold

I suppose it’s time to come clean. Quite a while ago, I was invited to take part in a survey for Sony with gauged how willing I would be to pay for additional PlayStation Network features. I took a screenshot of the survey, and may well receive a letter telling me to take it away, but welcome to the internet.

In either case, it looks like there is definitely going to be a move to some sort of paid service, as prompted by a question put to Andrew House, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe on the official blog. When asked, “Will PlayStation Network become a paying service?”, he replied;

I can assure you that the current PSN as you know it will remain a free service. It is something that our competitors don’t offer and something that shows our loyalty to the PlayStation Community. However, Kaz Hirai stated a few months ago that we were looking at a premium service to sit alongside the current free service and that objective has not changed. You’ll learn more about it very soon.

So that started that off, and all the blogs went digging for what features could possibly be coming to this rumoured ‘PSN+’ . Joystiq probably have the most believable guesses about the service, claiming it will be announced at E3, which is happening in three weeks. They say that subscribers will have access to a rotating list of PSone classics and PSP minis, exclusive DLC, PS Store discount, as well as the pretty cool sounding feature that will let you play an hour of a retail game for free, before being prompted to purchase.

As well as game based features, there is also a rumour that subscribers will get access to the Playstation Protection Plan, to look after your consoles should they fall ill. One thing I’m perhaps less psyched about them charging for is cross game voice chat, but this may be to cover server costs and if the rest of the deal was significant enough, it could probably off set the fact you’ve got to pay for that. Joystiq’s sources also say that the rumoured cloud based storage system will also launch with PSN+, with an auto patch feature, allowing you to patch all your games on the system, will be included.

No idea about possible pricing as of yet, with some people throwing around a $9.99 per month figure have been neither denied or confirmed.

Is it a good deal? Well, cost could be a bit steep, but then it does combine quite a lot of features, such as the Protection Plan, that could cost more overall. Obviously, we’re not sure about the feature set, with the only thing I really want to see given to everyone is cross-game chat, but then again, you pay for that in Xbox Live Gold.

And yes, there will be a lot of people sitting in a dorito covered mess in front of their computers claiming that Xbox Live Gold is better value, or PSN overall is worth more, but they are currently arguing about something they know little about. If the feature set that has been guessed at stays, or is improved upon, it could offer an interesting upgrade option for normal PSN users, without segregating those who pay/don’t pay. I like playing games, so anything that lets me do more of that, could be pretty cool.