Free Service No More
“Silly Xbox players, paying for their online service.” That was the derisive comment every PS3 owner made as they booted up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and jumped into a game of Team Deathmatch. That is, until Sony shifted their completely free, online multiplayer service into a subscription based model that was at least in part sold with the idea that downloading games would be faster. It’s not. You have to use dumb hacks to get faster downloads
Sure, it’s awesome getting free games every month as part of PlayStation Plus, but besides that, can you truthfully say that you notice more stable online gaming experiences, or that you are downloading your games faster? In fact, Sony has one of the slowest download services in the gaming world today. Go ahead, download the same game from Steam and then on your PS4. Compare the times. You’ll beat the PC version before the PS4 version is done downloading.
Server prices aren’t cheap, but this wasn’t done because Sony wanted to provide a better experience for their fans. This decision was made in spreadsheets, and went through because they knew that Xbox was already charging, which would minimize the backlash felt by Sony.