PSN Premium. I think TSA coined the phrase at the beginning of December, and then Sony ‘borrowed’ it for their survey, which got leaked later in the month. “Sony is considering offering a premium PlayStation Network subscription in the future,” it said. “The subscription offering would provide new premium features you could choose to pay for and are in addition to the features currently available for free such as access to online multiplayer gaming.”
We’ve already been over the guts of the survey, but with E3 around the corner perhaps it’s worth looking back at what Sony had planned to see whether it’s all still as relevant six months later. Whether it’s called PlayStation Plus or not it’s fairly obvious that cross-game chat is on the cards, with SCEE employees themselves confirming that it’s on the way. Will it be a part of PSN Premium? We reckon it will, because this is something I’m sure people will be happy to pay for.
But what if the results of the survey came back that everyone wanted cross-game chat but nobody wanted to pay for it? There’d need to be other stuff in PSN Premium that would make it worth buying, right? But what else is there to add? Well, we’ve heard a couple of rumours recently regarding access to Beta versions of games (and indeed, perhaps a free PSN title each month too as part of the subscription) and it seems fair enough to me to limit early access to key games to those willing to pay up every four weeks.
And then there’s that “online music service” that was mentioned – could Spotify be heading to the PS3 for Premium owners? Discounts on certain games like Xbox Live Gold users get? Twitter? Proper Facebook integration? If I’m honest, the fact that we can play games on the PS3 for free is great, but I’d be quite happy splashing a fiver a month if they can build in lots of other cool features – not least the background patching we mentioned last week.
Interesting times indeed, and we’re pretty sure Sony will be mentioning PSN Premium, or whatever it ends up being called, this E3. In the meantime, what features would you like to see added to the PS3 that would make you want to pay a subscription, or are you happy enough with the features you get bundled in with the price of the console? As always, let us know in the comments below.