In an interview with Nikkei, Sony Computer Entertainment EVP and CTO Masayuki Chatani has suggested that Sony is looking at subscriber fee models to offset the cost of running PlayStation Network. He said servers have costs and that Sony couldn t rely on a sell-and-forget model where it sold the hardware without selling content and services. Chatani suggested that such paid content not only included digital downloads such as games and items for PS3 but also schemes like monthly fees.
Talking about PS3, Chatani suggested a console s lifecycle is about a decade and pointed to the PS2. He said introducing the PS3 slim follows what Sony did with PS2, getting a slimmed down version to market to give the system a boost and attract more customers at about the halfway mark. He also touched on how the new PS3 is as slim as it s going to get without major modifications. He said Sony was able to significantly trim down the PS2 form factor by doing away with the internal HDD, which wouldn t make sense for PS3. He said another option would be gutting the PS3 power supply to make it an external brick, but he added that would make the system harder to use.
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