Sony was again talking about the possibility of subscription/membership fees for the PlayStation Network during a recent investor presentation in Japan. Currently, Sony does not charge a fee for the use of the PlayStation Network, despite the fact that most agree that Sony's online experience and offerings are not on the scale of what Microsoft is currently offering.

Basically, the reality is that servers and bandwidth cost money and costs will continue to rise as the move toward digital content increases. Sony is expecting to see continued growth in this area and, as a result, will have to continue to add capacity to keep up with demand, which will cost money.

Right now, the best guess is that Sony, like Microsoft, will offer a level of “free” content and access with a premium pay level for additional content and abilities. Of course, it is not lost on Sony that Microsoft has been able to get users to pay for Xbox Live for a long time now; and so far, Sony has been missing out on this potential revenue stream.

While nothing is confirmed, we expect that Sony will likely phase in this pay premium access at some point next year. It is unknown if they intend to charge as much per month as Microsoft does, but it is likely that this will be the case. Stay tuned, as no final decision has been reached; but with the cost of servers and bandwidth necessary to meet the growing demand with all of the additional consoles the company has been moving, we suspect that they will be going in this direction quickly.