PlayStation Network director of operations Eric Lempel has reassured consumers that Sony isn’t about to start charging for its PS3 online service – despite continuing with a policy of continual software improvements.

Sony this week detailed its 2.40 Firmware update and the introduction of a new trophy system.

Lempel told Next-Gen in a wider interview:

“We’re happy with what we’re doing right now and we’re going to stick with it. I think being free is always an advantage.

“The fact that it’s free is nice for consumers who want to try out the online experience, those who may be new to it and may not be ready to commit to spending dollars, and that’s a really good message for us.

“Being free also gives them the opportunity to spend the money that they may have spent on a subscription on online items or online games instead. We have a ton of games for the price of a subscription and offer a significant amount of great original content that you can’t get anywhere else.”

Lempel added that the firm would not shy away from making Firmware improvements if consumers called for it:

“There are a lot of features that are still part of our roadmap,” he commented. “When we release new features we want to make sure that we have a baseline set of features to put out there and that they work properly. We feel that these new features are ready and that they offer consumers a great advantage over what they have today.

“However, we’re not going to stop enhancing the features. Every time we do a firmware update we enhance old features as well as providing new features, so we’re taking a lot of the feedback very seriously. Going into this we knew there were some things that wouldn’t make it but there’s always time to fix those and get them in, but in the meantime this should keep consumers satisfied for some time.”