Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida has said that Sony will be looking to provide "as many services as possible for free" on its PlayStation 3 console and on the PSP, leaving costs to be covered in other ways.

"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. Not necessarily getting people to pay, but with advertising and so on," said Yoshida.

"Those are things we're looking at, and learning how we can provide a service without people having to pay - but we still get our operation running with funding from somewhere so that we can maintain the level of quality we want."

Having the PlayStation Network multiplayer access for free is a great advantage for PS3 owners - those who own Xbox 360 consoles need to pay costs of around £40 a year for the same privilege.

However, Sony has also added many other extra features for free, including a number of internet services.

The latest of these extra features was recently announced at the Leipzig Games Convention. Called Vidzone, it will be a streaming music and video service allowing users to download their favourite songs and create playlists for free.

"We can't support all the needs of the consumer and there are great companies providing services on the PC already," Yoshida said. "We're very open to provide the opportunity to those companies to reach our user base as well."

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>> Via - Eurogamer